why is it so hard to make a virus killing drug?
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I think it’s easier to explain it this way
We found bacteria killing drugs completely by accident.
Antibiotics were discovered by Alexander Fleming in 1928 while studying bacteria for strep. He returned from holiday and noticed mold growing on the petri dish and the bacteria wasn’t growing near it. He put two and two together and with some work was able to isolate the compounds mold were making to kill the bacteria.
This discovery completely changed medicine.
We do have effective anti-viral drugs but nothing on the scale as effective of antibiotics.
Viruses are a completely different animal than bacteria (not literally, they aren’t animals) as they are tiny balls of protein that can’t even replicate by themselves. Anything we can make that stops those proteins will probably also kill you.
We are actively researching this, but we haven’t had that crazy aha moment yet.
But on the other side we do in fact have an extremely effective way of defeating viruses, vaccines.
Our own immune system is extremely good at fighting viruses, and with a bit of training from a vaccine we can achieve immunity or at the very least not suffer nearly as bad from the disease.
Vaccines are arguably an even more important discovery in terms of medicine than antibiotics.
Unfortunately the vaccines creation techniques we have aren’t effective against all viruses… yet
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