If a fever is there to raise a body’s temperature to help kill off a virus – why at the later stages of infection does the fever stop being a symptom even though other symptoms are still present? If other symptoms are still present then the host must still carry the pathogen, so surely the fever should last until the host is healthy?
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So a lot of your symptoms are actually your body’s response to fighting the virus. As you said, the fever isn’t the virus, it’s your body’s reaction. It’s the same thing for many, if not all of the other symptoms.
As for why the fever is the first to go, fevers are extremely taxing on the body. They are generally the last line of defense before you suffer lasting damage. Your body will generally “turn off” the fever as soon as it feels the virus is now longer a threat. Some of the other responses require minimal resources from the body and will be allowed to linger.
Because it’s one that your body controls and it takes a lot of energy to maintain the fever. The fever also causes harm to your body’s vital organs like your brain. Your body only wants to increase it’s body temperature for the minimum amount of time necessary.
For the same reason that you often find people do froze to death naked or semi naked. After a while, your automatic systems that try to keep you alive ‘get tired’ and give up. In your body, your hypothalamus controls temperature. It sends out signals that tell the muscles to generate heat. They do this first through enhanced metabolism, and later by physical movement (shivering). But this system depends on the muscles being able to maintain, which they can’t forever. Sooner or later, they give up, they’re just too tired to continue heat generation, OR the brain has decided that the remaining energy it has is better spent on keeping the brain and other systems operational as opposed to maintaining heat.
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