If symptoms of a cold are just the body fighting the cold, what is the real harm of being sick?
In: Biology
In today’s modern world, there really isn’t any harm from being sick, in most cases.
We have evolved natural methods, fever, mucous, etc to slow down the growth of bacteria&viruses while our adaptive-immune system mounts up a response (typically takes 1-2 weeks).
We can afford to turn-off these unpleasant defense systems (via drugs) because we can easily pay this price. Our body is otherwise unstressed due to our modern medicine, bountiful food, and hygienic lifestyle and can easily suffer the resource drain, toxic chemicals, and cell death that bacteria& viruses cause (meanwhile, it develops adaptive immunity and eventually clears the infection).
20000+ years ago, this would not be the case. We’d constantly be 0-5 days away from starvation, using precious energy to evade predators and the elements, all while also fighting off an onslaught of invaders from abhorrent hygiene.
Without the features of sickness to slow them down, the invaders would easily consume enough energy to pose a serious threat.
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