Got prescribed antibiotics yesterday and I got to thinking about what an infection is, what causes infections, and so forth. When the doctor examined me he just looked at my skin and made the determination that I needed antibiotics. How did he know it wasn’t a viral infection? Would I be running a temperature? Can you not get a viral infection in/under your skin?
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Skin surface infections are more likely to be bacterial or fungal because the cells at the very top are already dead – useless to a virus that needs *living* cells to reproduce but still potential food for a hostile organism.
For infections that are harder to identify at a glance we test for the various chemicals or telltale genetic signatures of likely culprit bacteria and viruses.
Bacteria leave all sorts of metabolic waste and cellular toxins in their wake, viruses are much quieter and only leave their distinctive genetics.
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