Learn English – Is the use of ‘has’ appropriate with first person singular

What probably happened is that the piece was edited and a crucial antecedent — what the "It" that begins the first sentence of the second paragraph referenced — got removed because an editor thought it was material that could be cut for length. Something on the order of

... Millions of Americans fear that the bill abolishes their rights to due process.

It does indeed ...

would have tied everything together nicely.

The big problem with journalism moving from print to the Web, as I see it, is that the cycles are so fast that normal editing suffers and copy-editing is virtually non-existent.

You can quasi-justify anything, realistically speaking. But why bother? Not only is it linguistically and even grammatically iffy at best, it is going to throw off a good chunk of your more perceptive audience members if not for a mere second. For the purposes of communication, it would be hard to justify it as it does little to clarify your statement, rather it will most likely obscure it.

Going along with the idea of good communication, I think the only way 'who' would be appropriate for the virus is if your are attempting to convey to your audience that the suffering through the virus instilled a sense of bitterness and symbolic hatred towards this thing enough that you would anthropomorphize it as to provide further clarity on your feelings.

So it depends on what message you are trying to communicate, but more than likely it would not benefit you to use who as opposed to almost anything else (which, that, etc).