Which is more harmful bacteria or virus?

Answer 1

No a virus is generally much worse than a bacterial. Bacterial are single celled organisms that are very big compared to a virus. You can kill bacterial in many ways such as antibiotics which make the bacteria cell walls burst, or with heat, cold UV light, silver or radiation.

Bacteria reproduce by cell division so 1 becomes 2, 2 become 4 etc.

A virus is not really a life form, it is just DNA in a thin membrane. The virus can enter a cell in the body where it hijacks the natural mechanisms inside the cell and uses them to replicate the virus DNA, This goes on until the cell is full of virus and eventually bursts releasing them so they can infect other cells. So where bacteria can multiple quickly by division, A virus can multiple very quickly by using the host organism to replicate it. Many thousands of viruses can be made by a single cell.

Mankind has cures and treatments for thousands of bacteria but has only ever eradicated one virus. The smallpox virus.

We can treat people for viral infections which block the virus entering the cells or we can use drugs which slow down or stop the replication of a virus when it is inside a cell, but mainly it is down to the immune system to defeat a virus.

Inoculations against a virus expose the immune system to parts of a virus or a similar but harmless virus, so if we become infected by that particlular virus in the future. the immune system will recognise it straight away and start to fight it. But this does not mean we are always immune to that virus, The immune system can still loose the fight!

Answer 2

This depends on the particular bacterial species of viral species. This could be answered by stating that viruses are more harmful because all viruses are pathogenic to humans (at least the ones that actually can infect humans) and they are generally harder to combat; however, certain bacterial infections can be very, very harmful as well, such as meningitis or necrotizing facitiis (soft tissue flesh-eating disorder).