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"Virus" kinda refers more to the phenomenon of the species as a whole (kinda like how "humanity" refers to all of us, plus people who came before, plus all the stuff associated with us). Likewise "COVID-19" refers to the pandemic, rather than the viral species.

Meanwhile "virion" is the term to refer to the virus particles, so I suppose the most precise/pedantic way to say it would be "all SARS-CoV-2 Virions"?

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Guarantee nobody's going to say that.

And I don't necessarily think they should, I just think language is a fun toy. From context it's clear what they meant, I thought it was interesting to find the most precise way of conveying the concept.

I don't think that level of precision is needed for this discussion, except as a "proof of concept" of sorts.

I certainly appreciated the breakdown.

I enjoyed it too, don't get me wrong, but as much as I like playing with the cruft in the (English) language spec, constructions like this are write-only.

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