Eli5 Antibiotics work well with bacteria, but then why can’t we develop the same for viruses?What’s the big difference between them?

Question

Eli5 Antibiotics work well with bacteria, but then why can’t we develop the same for viruses?What’s the big difference between them?

In: 2

Answer 1

Bacteria are alive, they are working single-cell critters. Disrupting them kills them and that’s all we need.

Viruses are hijackers. They break into a cell and use the cell’s machinery to make lots of copies of themselves until the cell fails and spills all the little virus hijackers into the host. Outside a host cell, viruses aren’t very alive, you can’t disrupt them because they are not doing anything but floating around hoping to find a cell to sneak into.