how does a virus actually kill you?
In: 1
Lots of fun ways!
Certain viruses might infect your lungs, causing the tissue to be inflamed until you suffocate. Others might cause that same tissue to secrete fluids until you’re lungs fill and you drown. Other viruses might infect your brain, causing damage and eventual loss of function until you die. Some trigger your immune system into basically nuking itself trying to get rid of the virus and killing your own cells in the process.
There are tons of viruses that all work different ways, way more than I could list here, but the basics are simple: Infect a cell, inject the virus’s genetic code so that the body’s cell makes more of the virus instead of doing what it’s supposed to, and the explode the cell when it’s full, releasing all the new viruses. Most viruses evolved to _not_ kill their victims, as it allows them to spread better, but become dangerous when say, a virus that evolved to not kill a cow jumps to humans.
The virus will use the cells resources to replicate itself. The virus can use more resources then the cell can handle and the cell will die. If left unconfined the virus will spread from cell to cell and kill each and every one. Eventually you die from some sort of organ failure due to a lack of living cells in that organ. There are not many viruses which are unconfined due to the immune system but HIV is one of them. Without medication the HIV will kill all the white blood cells in your body causing AIDS which is a deadly condition as it will allow other viruses to go unconfined and destroy the other cells in your body.
In a normal healthy human the immune system will react to a virus infection to keep the infection down and stop it. The immune systems response to an infection is proportional to the extent of the infection. But there is no limit to the immune system response. This means that if you get a strong enough infection the immune system might react so much that it kills you. For example in an effort to combat the virus your bodies core temperature might get so high that your neurons coagulate and die. Or if your lungs get infected the inflamation caused by the inrush of white blood cells trying to combat the infection can leak into your lungs and literally suffocate you to death. Infection is your nose and throat can also be deadly to swelling from the inflamation. You might suspect there is a problem with the body when the immune system end up causing most of the deaths from virus infections. But these are big infections which the immune system can not control on its own so the response is more of an all or nothing response.
Viruses at their most basic form replicate by taking over a cell’s machinery to produce copies of themselves. This almost always causes the cell to die, either from bursting, or because the cell put so much energy into making viruses that it didn’t perform its own upkeep and fell apart. As these copies get released, they exponentially infect more and more of the same cells, slowly causing damage as they destroy more and more cells. Lose enough cells and things can get bad. Rabies and Polio damage your brain and neurons, resulting in swelling and paralysis. HIV wipes out your immune system, slowly leaving you more and more susceptible to other diseases. Hepatitis is what happens when your liver is damaged enough by the infection to stop function. Respiratory viruses can sometimes damage the lungs enough that they can’t take in oxygen or they fill with fluid
And sometimes its your body that tries to kill you first. Inflammation and fevers both can be caused by your own immune system trying to attack and handle the infection, and sometimes this runs out of control and hurts you instead if the fever runs too high for too long, or the swelling damages sensitive tissues or organs. This is often how many people die from the Flu or Covid
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