Tuesday May 19, 2020; 12:24 PM EDT
- Viruses on computers and viruses in the real world are interesting to compare. Right now I don't know if my computer, a Mac, has a virus, but there are no obvious symptoms of it being infected. That does not mean it's not infected. #
When there's a virus going around, it screws up everything. Back in the 00s when viruses were running wild on Windows machines, I was a Windows user. Over time you learned how to defend against them. For example, when they offer you an ad-free version of an app, you say no. That was just the beginning. We were always trying to keep our computers virus-free, but eventually the viruses would figure out a way around our defenses, and we'd be spending all our time fighting it, until we got our machine uninfected, or at least without symptoms. #- So, the way we're dealing with the new coronavirus is the way computer newbies deal with computer viruses. I know because I have supported a virus neophyte, my mom. The current US govt is behaving pretty much the way she would. She didn't want to learn the rules, and she wanted to pretend it was okay, get back to business as usual (checking her email, writing a blog post). All the while she's got something watching and recording her every move and looking for a chance to infect some other computer. #