A new virus has been keeping the world under its spell since the beginning of 2020. The starting point of the pandemic of the respiratory disease COVID-19 ("Coronavirus Disease 2019"), or "Corona Pandemic" for short, caused by this new virus was the city of Wuhan in China. Initially treated as a local phenomenon, this new viral disease quickly developed into an epidemic in China, which was difficult to control due to the sheer number of people affected and the specific symptoms alone (severe bilateral pneumonia and acute lung failure - hence SARS = Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome). Due to today's global networking and the rapid accessibility of almost every major city in the world via air travel, it was only a matter of time before the virus and the associated lung disease spread all over the world within a very short time.  In this way, COVID-19 developed into the third major pandemic of the 21st century alongside the SARS pandemic of 2002/2003 and the swine flu (2009/10).  The devastating socio-economic effects alone are far from assessable in their entirety and will probably lead to a break not only in economic thinking but also in the way people live in many countries. The pandemic is a sudden demonstration of the disadvantages of a global world based on the division of labor, which are often ignored in the general discussion, and which only really become apparent as soon as there are crisis developments. One need only think of the temporary or permanent interruption of supply chains or, more generally, of the obstacles to the exchange of goods and services as-sociated with pandemic measures. In addition, there are also the effects that directly or indirectly affect every-one, such as the loss or restriction of freedom of move-ment due to quarantine measures, loss of income due to the economic crisis caused by the pandemic, and per-sonal "inconveniences" such as a general obligation to wear masks. Since the virus disease is also very selective (high risk of older people with previous illnesses) and many, especially younger people and healthy middle-aged people survive an infection with the corona virus in most cases (but not always!) without symptoms or only with slight flu-like symptoms, the acceptance of measures to contain the pandemic will predictably decrease as the pandemic progresses. This leads to new problems and challenges that politicians in particular must face. It can only be hoped that it will be possible to develop vaccines as quickly as possible that will provide the most durable immunity possible against the corona-virus SARS-CoV-2 and that are available worldwide at reasonable conditions. But one thing already seems to be emerging. The virus will certainly - similar to the flu (in-fluenza) - accompany us for a long time to come. 
The topic of this book, however, is not the disease COVID-19 and its epidemiology, but the virus itself. Nowadays, everyone has the word "virus" in their mouths, but what viruses are actually about, how they are structured and how they "work" exactly, there is of-ten only rudimentary knowledge about this (unless you are a doctor or biologist). This "knowledge gap" is what this book is intended to help close in an entertaining way on a popular scientific level.