Why haven’t we cured the common cold?
In: Biology
Because viruses are dicks.
They aren’t life — they’re closer to a protein or a vitamin than to a living thing, which means you can’t _kill_ them, only _totally obliterate_ them which is pretty hard to do with things smaller than a drop of water.
On top of that, they change all the time. They’re like tiny little biological computers that randomize their program to find out how to better fit their environment and this makes them really hard to obliterate.
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The Common Cold is caused by about 200 different strains of rhinoviruses, coronaviruses, adenoviruses and enteroviruses.
If you’re talking about a vaccine to prevent that’s a lot of different viruses and strains for a vaccine to have. Plus they tend to mutate a lot.
And the common cold just isn’t enough of a problem for a lot of money to be thrown at it. People may get on average a few colds per year but unless you’re already frail from something else you’re unlikely to die.
As to an actual cure. That’s generally difficult with viral infections. Normal approaches to viral infections is to treat symptoms and let the body do its thing. There are medications known as antivirals which can be used to help the body in this but none so far work against the viruses which cause the common cold.
The common cold is a coranavirus and coranaviruses tend to mutate. This is why folks with the COVID vaccine are still catching COVID.
Because there isn’t just one common cold and it is constantly mutating, it is even worse than trying to combat seasonal flu. In addition there isn’t a significant death rate from getting common colds so little motivation.
Because there is not “the cold”. Cold viruses mutate very fast, that’s why you have to refresh the vaxx so often
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