Viruses are extremely rare with shared audio and video content. There are checkboxes for individual files which are downloaded. So, if getting audio files, you can ensure they are all .WAV files. Or .MP3 files. For video, the same. The reality is that people don't torrent video and audio files to infect others but do so to share content.
Typically illegally, but they do so anyway.
There is a lot of scare tactics out there about viruses and torrents, but some torrent players actually will only download specific types of files and will play them back immediately, on the fly, and will get rid of anything that isn't a standard audio/video file.
I do occasionally see a .EXE (executable) file in a download, but then I don't download that file. It never gets on my computer. I have no idea what those files do, since they never touch my computer.