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We are surrounded by, covered with, infected by, in living symbiosis with trillions upon trillions of particles of data. Every millimetre of seawater alone contains hundreds of millions of fragments of genomic information.
By themselves, these particles are inert. They are not life, despite the fact that they are capable of evolution. Unlike cells, these particles cannot appropriate energy from the surrounding environment. They cannot metabolise or self-replicate. To be replicated, they must be introjected into living organisms. We use agentive metaphors to describe what they do. They 'break into' the cell, 'hijack' the organellese, 'parasitise' the autopoietic chemistry of life. But these are just chemical reactions. The virus has no agency without its host. The primary agency in any pandemic is human.
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