Also refers to viruses dormant without any host, for example https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-26387276 whilst an edge-case and it does show that enviromental factors and how a particular virus responds and reacts are still things we are learning about this one.

Heck, may find out that frozen good with contaminated packaging can put the viruses into dormant mode and when you take them out of the freezer, and temperature and humidity level kick it into life. Details like that unlikely, yet still not been ruled out and much science still ahead upon this virus and caught many off guard and on the backfoot, but we love solving problems and the science is starting to get more detailed a bigger picture every day. But still, mindful of not eliminating aspects that have not been totally ruled out is a balance of risk/caution and fair judgement still plays a part.

Dormancy isn't really proper biology jargon, the correct term for what I referred to above is latency.

However, outside of the cell, neither of those terms mean anything.

A virus outside of a cell does nothing, period. It is essentially a USB flash drive with a computer virus in it. Saying a USB flash drive can "lie dormant in a drawer for days" is just silly.

> Heck, may find out that frozen good with contaminated packaging can put the viruses into dormant mode and when you take them out of the freezer, and temperature and humidity level kick it into life.

We won't though, because we thoroughly understand how these things function. There are things that function like that: bacteria.

I suggest you re-read the comment you replied to. There is no “live” or “dormant”, in that article it simply means it was not damaged by freezing.