Eli5: What do deadly viruses/parasites get out of killing their hosts?

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Surely it is easier to spread through a living host?

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If the disease is highly contagious, then it doesn’t matter if the host dies in a few days, because during those few days most of the people living around the host would already get infected. If the disease isn’t too contagious, then it usually doesn’t kill or takes a relatively long time to kill (think about AIDS for example) for precisely this reason.

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