Again, you're arguing against something that wasn't asserted. The article doesn't say some virus infected a human and bam, placenta, next generation. It says some viral infections gave us individual proteins that wound up handy later.

> the idea that it can ... somehow get into our sperm and egg in order to self propagate into another organism... is ridiculous

Again, that's precisely what endrogenous retroviruses do. From my link:

"Rarely, retroviral integration may occur in a germline cell that goes on to develop into a viable organism. This organism will carry the inserted retroviral genome as an integral part of its own genome—an "endogenous" retrovirus (ERV) that may be inherited by its offspring as a novel allele. Many ERVs have persisted in the genome of their hosts for millions of years."