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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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.
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