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Drugs can treat viral infections, just not the same way as other infections. With other infections--let's say bacterial--the bacteria attacks and kills cells. Drugs fight them by killing the bacteria.
Viruses enter into the cells they attack. They then hijack the cell and turn them into factories for producing more viruses. Drugs can't just go in and attack the cells they're merged into, because the drugs would hit the healthy original cells, too.
Drugs that fight viruses focus on interrupted the process of taking over the cell at some stage. Needless to say, this is very difficult, so much so that it's easier to treat the symptoms of some diseases and leave the immune system to fight the virus.
Many many viruses don't even have drugs developed to fight them, because we can't figure out how to beat them. It's just that hard.
Vaccines are much easier to make and have the advantage of being proactive and disadvantage of being completely useless after you're infected.
Viruses are tricky business.
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∙ 13y ago
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