why do viruses try to kill the thing keeping them alive?
In: Biology
It is not possible for a virus to reproduce without disrupting the function of the organism they are replicating in. In theory, the perfect virus would replicate without its host being harmed or even noticing. But the fact that your cells are using energy producing proteins they were not meant to produce and filling up your body with them means harm will probably happen, and the faster the virus replicates the more they will tend to disrupt the body unless they evolve specific mechanisms to avoid this disruption.
So there’s basically a trade-off. Viruses will evolve to reproduce as fast as they can get away with, without harming their host’s ability to spread them to new hosts. If they reproduce quickly and a few of the hosts die from the overwhelming number of viruses, but they spread the virus to many other hosts before they die? That is a success. If they reproduce quietly and the host doesn’t notice them and is able to walk around and spread the virus to other people for a long time? That is also a success. There are many strategies that work.
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