The answer is relative to how we define a virus and how we define alive.
A virus can be seen as active or inactive and malignant or benign. This does not mean it is alive, just inactively benign or actively malignant. We define medicines, poisons & fungi in the same way. Medical science is currently discovering that bacteria, which are all living organisms, can also be active or inactive, malignant or benign.
When a virus is believed to be active & malignant, it is defined as a disease with viral attributes. The question is: Does the virus cause disease or is the dis-ease caused by a viral belief?
A harmful or destructive influence is one dictionary definition of a virus. As in the pernicious virus of racism or the auto-immune deficiency of the gay viral plague. Did the viral belief in a gay plague cause the deficiency in auto-immunity?
An organism is alive because it is self-organising. An organism organises itself, whereas a virus does not.
Viruses are believed to be parasites because they only reproduce inside the cells of plants, animals & bacteria. A parasite is an organism that lives, feeds & reproduces on or in an organism of a different species; which causes harm to its host. As a virus is not an organism, it does not feed because it is not alive, so it cannot be a parasite. The only thing that feeds the malignancy of a virus is our evolving belief that it is alive, reproducing and mutating.
A virus, as defined by virology, is either an isolate, a variant or a strain; not a species. A virus is an actively beneficial fundamental part of every organism, its DNA or RNA. It has an active part to play influencing the life & death of a cell, not the apparent life of a viral disease.
A viral isolate is an extra-cellular DNA remnant from a redundant cell. It carries the instruction for all similarly redundant cells to self-destruct. It is part of the bodies autonomic cellular waste-disposal system.
DNA is a set of instructions that is our cellular genetic blue-print. It is influenced by our mental belief system in accordance with our perspective of reality. Our beliefs determine our environmental conditions, as they are a condition of our mental environment. Every virus is obligated to one specific set of environmental conditions. They condition our mental environment. My perspective is that a set of environmental conditions is a strain of viral beliefs.
A parasitic belief has parity, or polarity, with a common viral (environ) mental belief. Only negative or malignant false beliefs or fears are environmentally detrimental.
An isolated virus, called an isolate, has been separated from a host and grown in a different culture medium. The culture of the virus grows within the medium of the cell culture. Physical science sees a physical virus in a physical culture of a physical cell medium.
An isolate is a representation of a part of a physical genome sequence. The genes of our genetic genome are a physical representation of the ‘gen’, data, intelligence, information & memes of our mental belief system.
When an isolated mental belief goes viral, it influences our mental environment in a specific way. Whole species can be influenced detrimentally, by one strain of a common mentally programmed belief.
The mutation and evolution of programmed mental beliefs changes the environment of a culture and the cultural environment of an organic society of living organisms.
Negative Viral beliefs, called fears, are very much alive within the culture of our cells and within the environment of our society.