How a Virus Invades Your Body: An Eye-Popping, Animated Look

It’s get­ting close to that time of the year again, when the flu starts to wreak hav­oc. And so, with the help of NPR’s Robert Krul­wich and med­ical ani­ma­tor David Bolin­sky, we’re tak­ing an ani­mat­ed look at what actu­al­ly hap­pens when a virus invades your body and tricks a sin­gle cell into mak­ing a mil­lion more virus­es, and how your immune sys­tem even­tu­al­ly deals with the whole mess. It’s a nice demys­ti­fi­ca­tion of phe­nom­e­na that affects our every­day lives. If you feel inclined to get a flu shot after watch­ing this clip, I can’t say that I blame you.

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