virus
Unhappily, Siegfried's translators use ``virus'' with a sense like ``disease-causing microbe'' or ``pathogen.'' While this may have etymological justification, it can be confusing to English readers; thus they elsewhere speak of the virus of plague being the bacteria Yerisinia pestis. I suspect the translators were not very familiar with medicial English, as Siegfried was by profession a geographer.
[CRS]