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From a slashdot comment:

"the least enviable existence is the virus.

viruses in most other creatures see a few million years of success. in history perhaps theyve had success for thousands of years. But in the 21st century, arguably the worst existence you could hope for is a virus that crosses paths with a human, or something they enjoy.

Humans will start by identifying you and immediately notifying everyone and everything else of value that you exist, despite all your evolutionary attempts to hide. They will enact countermeasures that slow and stop your ability to reproduce. They will flat-out reject the premise of your spread. They will then voraciously consume any and all data about you day and night, forever. Everything you do, right down to the simplest proteins, will be documented, catalogued, studied, analyzed, and subjected to endless experimentation. they will see you at the atomic level, in terrifying detail, as if standing eye to eye. Your entire life will be and endless maze of trial and assault. And their knowledge doesnt just end when a human dies. They pass this knowledge to other humans. no matter how many die, new ones will always know exactly who you are. They will not forget you, and sometimes, they will openly celebrate people who learned about you..

Perhaps the worst part? with every experiment and test, they will come inexorably closer to killing you. Thats all they want from you. It is a slow death that sometimes lasts many of their lifetimes and if they cannot make it happen outright, they will use all the knowledge about you to teach their own bodies to destroy you on sight. They will relegate you to a shrug and a chuckle in the hallway on their way to actively retrain their own immune systems to end you. And the system that provides that armament will in most cases not cost them anything but a few moments of their day."