Given a chance, a virus will come to life. Otherwise, it remains as good as nonliving. It defies metabolism, sex and reproduction. But it defines what a "deep state" means, biologically. COVID goes virulent once its "deep state" has taken over an infected person's respiratory system at the cellular level.
Louis H. Sullivan, the epitome of architecture, coined this much-quoted axiom: form follows function. COVID can't agree more. In the form of a spike crown -- thus corona-virus -- COVID is able to function as a dispenser of its "deep state" seeds. The crown spikes make way for the COVID seeds to empty into a cell. The COVID seeds will grow up as viral swarms, which will go on to infect and doom every receptive cell they can find in the respiratory system.
Dooming a human cell doesn't mean dooming its owner. But if too many lung cells are doomed too fast, then their owner will be in trouble. Of course, the tables can be turned if the immune system kicks in and mounts a successful counter-attack soon enough. Combating COVID infection is therefore a race against time.
This being the case, the odds are undoubtedly stacked against aged and ailing folks. Their lungs, if infected by viral COVID, would easily invite secondary infection from bacterial pneumococcus, which is a leading cause of pneumonia. That's why we have sadly lost so many nursing home residents. That's also why it's ignominious for former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to have nursing homes accept COVID patients back in March 2020 (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/08/nyregion/nursing-homes-deaths-coronavirus.html).
Attached is a graphic video showing us how COVID-19 infects a human cell.
