Headline virus
News English often uses virus for any outbreak. Ask whether the story means a virus, a bacterium, or an unknown.
CDC influenza pages and COVID-era wording taught millions the word variant. That still does not make a virus a bacterium you treat with the same drug class.
This atlas refuses lab recipes. English-speaking readers need the public names — flu, norovirus, HIV — without a how-to.
Local notes
Variant in public copy
Variant is a surveillance word, not a moral grade. See the mutation topic for how names are minted.
Antibiotics
English clinic advice repeats: antibiotics do not treat typical viral colds. That sentence is the local public-health hook.
Official pages own schedules and treatment. This atlas does not.
More in Tree of microbes
Bacteria
Single-celled prokaryotes with cell walls — the oldest widespread life form, and both partners and pathogens.
Familiarity 95Fungi
A eukaryotic kingdom of yeasts, moulds and mushrooms — chitin walls, external digestion, partners of plants.
Familiarity 80Archaea
A prokaryotic domain that is not bacteria — methanogens, extremophiles and no known human pathogens.
Familiarity 35Bacteriophages
Viruses that infect bacteria — Earth's most abundant biological entities, and a concept-level idea in medicine.
Familiarity 42Protozoa
Motile unicellular eukaryotes — a teaching grade that includes pond ciliates and a minority of serious parasites.
Familiarity 58