I had an idea that it was just an extremely common virus that we can’t cure. However, upon looking it up some sources say that there are over 200+ viruses that cause the common cold. Does that mean the common cold is just some blanket term we have for viruses that cause these symptoms?
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“The common cold” is a viral respiratory disease of the upper respiratory tract (nose, throat, sinuses, etc.) It is generally quite mild, caused by one of about 200 different viruses, and usually goes away on its own or with minor over-the-counter drugs.
Yes, it’s a common blanket term for all of the viruses that cause similar upper respiratory symptoms which is why there are no cures for “colds”. Since they aren’t typically very dangerous, it’s not really a priority for getting rid of them. (Though once in a while you get a novel corona virus like COVID 19…)
The common cold is a syndrome (a constellation of symptoms) which can be caused by several different viruses. It’s difficult to count the number of viruses because of how many strains, variants and subvariants exist if each. But it’s thought that the most colds are caused by rhinoviruses, while many of the others are caused by non-SARSCoV2 coronaviruses.
It can also be caused by respiratory syncitial virus, adenovirus, coxsackievirus, parainfluenza virus, influenza and of course SARSCoV2 (covid-19), but there are several other potential viruses than can cause similar symptoms. Many of these virus also can cause more several disease, whereby most people wouldn’t call it a cold any more. These are more appropriately called flu like illnesses, which unfortunately some get mixed up with the stomach flu, which usually has nothing to do with influenza at all.
Yes, we call different viruses that cause the same symptoms a cold. Unless we test the person, we do not know what virus they carry so it’s not really necessary to come up with different names.
Some colds could be caused by bacteria. Generally, if you have a higher temperature, then it may be a bacterial infection.
Also if you have had the virus or bacteria before then, generally, you will not catch it again. So each time you get a cold it’s probably a different virus. Cold viruses can mutate but it’s not as fast as the flu
Bacteria do not cause colds and having a higher temperature does not mean that it’s caused by a bacteria.
Yep. “The common cold” is a blanket term for the symptoms that can be caused by 200+ different viruses.
Antibiotics don’t work on viruses, so we’d need vaccines. Making vaccines against 200 different viruses would be spectacularly complicated and expensive, and you’d probably need dozens of shots per person to administer them all. And by the time you did many of those 200 viruses would have mutated and you’d need new vaccines. It’s just not worth trying to prevent, especially since colds aren’t very dangerous to humans.
The common cold is an umbrella term for upper respiratory symptoms caused by a bunch of different viruses (usually rhinoviruses, non-SARS coronaviruses and RSV). Colds are usually mild, but depending on the virus and the person, they can be more severe. RSV is a more severe cold and it can kill high risk people like little kids and old people.
The reason we can’t “cure” the common cold is because there are so many different cold viruses. It would be impossible to get everyone vaccinated for every single cold virus, and it would be pretty pointless because most colds aren’t really dangerous.
Just to be clear, we can’t “cure” any virus. Viruses aren’t alive, and therefore can’t be killed. The best we can do is create vaccines to teach our immune system how to handle a specific virus when our body encounters it. There are also some antiviral drugs which are designed to block enzymes that specific virus create as part of their replication. However unlike antibiotics, which can actually kill the bacteria causing an infection, even antiviral drugs don’t kill the virus, they just severely limit its ability to replicate and/or cause the harmful symptoms.
Because the common cold is caused by many many different types of viruses, each of which can rapidly mutate, there isn’t a way to create a vaccine as the virus will just mutate faster than newer vaccines could be created.
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