Ah a pointless tiny hill I’m willing to die on.

The only reason viruses are called not alive is because of our elitist view that alive things have to do anything other than self replicate.

A tiger has its claws and speed and muscles to do one thing. To make another tiger. It uses its assets to get food and mate and makes another tiger and incidentally during that time “lives” by doing other stuff that does not involve making tigers.

Now if you condensed being alive to its purest form. Making more copies of yourself. And then you went even further. Ditch any self replicating mechanism, just have a way to take over someone else’s. You get a virus.