Antibiotics Would not Cure That Viral Infection

You wake up one morning feeling very ill, you have been feeling this way for days now but you think your body can fight it. You have been having aches over your body, feeling exhaustion, having diarrhea, headache, vomiting, cramps, fever, and not finding sleep. At the end, you went to see the doctor with the hope that you will be given an antibiotics so you can go back to your activities, since antibiotics has been the magical pill since the days when penicillin was discovered.

When you got to the doctor, the doctor gives you a bad news that you do not need an antibiotics since you are not suffering from a bacteria infection instead you are suffering from a viral infection as antibiotics do not treat virus. While bacteria and viruses are smaller, it is important to understand the extent of how small they are. The smallest bacteria is still bigger than the biggest virus.

Imag Source

The both are transferred from the pathogen, infected people, objects, and animal. Both diseases are associated with symptoms like digestive upset, respiratory distress, muscle pains, as well as joint pains. While they have some similarities, their differences are large. First, bacteria are single celled living organisms that can reproduce on their own, surviving in almost all types of environmental conditions depending on their characteristics.

While they can be found in every environment and every condition, most bacteria are harmless, and we have a lot of them in our body that are our micro bacteria floral ranging from those in our guts (digestive system) helping in digestion, and others in our body.

Like I mentioned that most bacteria are not harmful, the less than 1% of them that are harmful can cause diseases that can be fatal if not treated early enough. An example of a bacteria that led to a large number of people losing their lives is Yersina pestis which is responsible for the Bubonic plague (black death). The symptoms includes fever, chills, vomiting, diarrhea, aches and pains, and black boils but because there was no way to treat it then, it led to the death of over 20 million people.

With antibiotics discovery in the year 1936 We have been able to treat bacteria infection by killing the bacteria out rightly using the antibiotics, or by slowing its growth so the immune system can kill it by itself.

Image Source

Viruses on the other hand are made up of genetic material which is covered by a thin protein coating making it less living outside a host but living inside a host. It can only reproduce when it is able to get the required genetic information for reproducing from its host cell after injecting its own genetic material into the host's cells. Compared to bacteria, almost all viruses are virulent as they can cause disease in humans.

Viruses targets specific cells replicating itself and using the materials of the cells so it burst thereby killing them or making them malignant. They are responsible for a lot of diseases including the common ones like flu and common cold, as well as painful and deadly ones like hepatitis, HIV, Herpes, and so on. Another characteristics of viruses is their ability to mutate, and that is why you still come down with a flu even after you have gotten a flu shot. So vaccines are always created for the most dangerous and virulent strains of a virus but we cannot guarantee which of the strains will attack in a year.

There are cases where you might get a vaccine shot for a particular strain of virus but still fall sick from the same virus. This is as a result of the immune system not responding fast to the virus on contact. Vaccines expose the immune system to the antigens (inactive virus) causing the immune system to release antibodies that will fight the inactive antivirus causing the antibodies to to kill the virus, prepare itself against the virus and identify the virus in case of future encounter.

When you have a virus, it is not a death sentence out rightly. Using antiviral medication can be very useful in preventing viruses such as herpes and hepatitis as they work by interfering with the enzyme in the virus preventing it from infecting other cells that have not been infected but these drugs do not kill the virus, they prevent the virus from infecting other cells.

Another way to treat people infected with viruses is to use lasers. You might wonder what laser will be doing here, researchers at the Arizona State University show that using purple laser light to blast viruses for one-hundred femto seconds damages a virus outer shell, making it inactive. Then you ask why we are not virus free in our world since laser light can be used but the truth is it cannot be used for all viruses. In the case of a flu virus, it is important to manage the symptoms because the body would fight its way through.

---

---

Reference

---

---

_{https://www.drugs.com/article/antibiotics-and-viruses.html
https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/cellular-microscopic/light-virus.htm
https://www.thoughtco.com/why-the-flu-vaccine-doesnt-work-602176
https://www.drugs.com/cg/viral-syndrome.html
https://www.healthline.com/health/how-do-antibiotics-work
https://explorable.com/discovery-of-bacteria
https://www.photonics.com/Articles/Laser_Blasts_Viruses_in_Blood/a30842
https://www.pcrm.org/health-topics/gut-bacteria
https://www.history.com/topics/middle-ages/black-death
https://www.health.harvard.edu/drugs-and-medications/what-you-should-know-about-antiviral-drugs
https://phys.org/news/2007-09-laser-blasts-viruses-blood.html
https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/cellular-microscopic/virus-human.htm
https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-i/1918-flu-pandemic
https://www.vaccinestoday.eu/stories/what-is-herd-immunity/}