What do viruses/bacteria exactly do inside of our bodies that makes them dangerous and causes us to get sick?
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The short answer is they grow and replicate. However, in order to do this they attack and destroy the cells in our bodies. Viruses, for example, contain none of the machinery of their own to stay alive. In fact, ad you may know, they are rather famously considered to not even be alive. In order for them to replicate, they need to infect a host cell, hijack the cellular machinery, and start using it for its own purpose. The cell becomes entirely devoted to making more and more virions until eventually the cell is so full with viruses that it rips open, flood g the body with thousands and thousands of new virions to infect new cells.
So diseases have become specialists, and only infect certain kind of cells. Chicken pox and rabies, for example, both hide in nerve cells to stay hidden from the immune system and lurk unseen.
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