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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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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