It's not "alive" in the sense that viruses are more like pre-programmed self replicating robots. They have all the instructions and main goal to reproduce as much as possible. That's kind of other life forms goals as well, survive and reproduce. Once a virus has infected a cell, it goes to activating it's instructions and just works on replicating as much as possible. There aren't the general metabolisms going on in viruses themselves like a cell would, but the virus does continue to reproduce, and in that process find new hosts to reproduce more. Like I said, viruses are just kind of biologic (so one would think living) self replicating robots that don't use most of the general qualities of a living cell.
It's not "alive" in the sense that viruses are more like pre-programmed self replicating robots. They have all the instructions and main goal to reproduce as much as possible. That's kind of other life forms goals as well, survive and reproduce. Once a virus has infected a cell, it goes to activating it's instructions and just works on replicating as much as possible. There aren't the general metabolisms going on in viruses themselves like a cell would, but the virus does continue to reproduce, and in that process find new hosts to reproduce more. Like I said, viruses are just kind of biologic (so one would think living) self replicating robots that don't use most of the general qualities of a living cell.