boldpandabear

How does a non-living thing like a virus mutate?

I have heard virologists liken viruses to seeds but seeds have cells, metabolisms, water and other energy stores and active running processes — seeds are alive.

Is there a reliable source for when COVID was officially here in the US?

I'm curious where I can find the studies that prove:

1- viruses are contagious.

2 - viruses definitively cause negative symptoms.

3 - vaccines work to prevent symptoms beyond placebo effect.

I have looked everywhere but unable to find anything more than "vaccines work because they do." type stuff from the CDC.

I want to review the actual groundbreaking studies that virology and vaccine effectiveness are created from.

I notice when I try to click an organic search link if I miss ever so slightly, Google is now sending me to e-commerce sites as if I clicked an ad.

For example, I was researching if the big 10 would play football this year and tried to click a news link and must have missed or something and Google sent me to a site for big 10 merchandise. There was no ad showing on Google for this at all. I just tried to click the newslink and it took me to an ecommerce store.

Is this a Google intended feature or do I have a virus on my computer or something?

How can one definitively prove that the presence of a certain particle in the body is also the cause of a certain symptom? How do we know if it’s correlation or true causation?