Submitted by DillPickleEverything t3_y8xi7o in explainlikeimfive
We have antibiotics to fight bacterial infections in humans, but we cannot fight viruses such as the common cold. There are antivirals for specific viruses but they don’t always work. Why can’t we make antivirals like we make antibiotics?
Spiritual_Jaguar4685 t1_it2cn5u wrote
One big challenge is that the idea of a virus being "alive" is a touchy subject. The vote is still out but I'm in the "No, they are not" camp, viruses are just clumps of organic molecules that are like a mouse trap, they spring into an action when triggered, but they aren't "choosing" to trigger.
Most antibiotics don't kill bacteria, they either weaken them or slow their reproduction rate so that our immune system can step up and wipe them out. 95% of the time, our immune systems are the real hero, not the antibiotics. Additionally bacteria are "external" to our cells, so we can find them and attack them easier.
Viruses invade our cells and do their damage inside, so passing immune system cells can't see them or engage them because they are hiding. Again, if our goal is to just mess with the invader until our immune system can neutralize them all, if our immune system isn't taking because the viruses are hiding, that strategy doesn't really work.
Finally, viruses change insanely quickly, they are like the Borg if you're a Star Trek person. The virus a person get's infected with is often not the virus they infect other people with because they are constantly changing and evolving. Just look at how many strains and variants of COVID we have already, how the treatment and symptoms keep changing as well.
I bet I'll get some heat from the "are viruses alive" comment, and we can all agree that the concept of "life" is really, really complicated if you spend a few minutes thinking about it. For any hard "life needs X" line you can draw, you'll find a clearly living animal that doesn't need that. At the least, I draw the line on metabolism for viruses, they do not require, use, ingest, or produce and sort of energy required to grow, move, reproduce... you know, live. They are just molecular bear traps waiting for the right cell to step in and produce more bear traps.