I guess fomes is one of those plural sounding singular words like pliers , but it's gradually being replaced by the originally incorrect fomite , which does sound more singular. I remember lighting firecrackers with something called punk . It was like a stick of incense without the cloying smell. I haven't lit a firecracker in years. But what a neat word history, which makes fire an analogy for a living pathogen.
Punk is a fomite, and an arsonist is a vector.
Usually an arsonist is a punk, too, but that's another story. Recordings are fomites but are also sort of virtual vectors. I'm all ears when it comes to neat words. A word can open up a whole philosophical area of thought. I remember long ago excitedly discovering the word hysteresis .