why is fighting with viruses harder than fighting with bacteria?
110619
Neutrophils and macrophages phagocytize (swallow) bacteria without regard to which type it is.  While there are also non-specific defenses to viri (the plural of virus), the same defenses are used against bacteria as well.  There are specific defenses against certain bacteria and viri that are used to combat them (antibodies and antigens), but one usually has to be exposed to the pathogen before the antigens/antibodies can be produced by lymphocytes, although there are exceptions, known as innate immunities.\n\nThe main difference between our ability to fend off attacks by bacteria and viri is the phagocytic ability of the previosly names white blood cells (leukocytes) having the ability to swallow and then neutralize the bacteria.  This means more general defense against bacteria than against viri and therefore easier to fight, although with memory t cells, after we have produced and antigen to fight viri, we continue producing it and it remains present in the blood stream.  This is known as acquired immunity, and is the reason why most people wont get diseases like chicken pox more than once in their lifetime.
775996
They can be.  Some viruses are harder to kill then others.  I f viruses can't be killed, we would die of a simple cold.  Some viruses  are like roaches,  You could smash the ones you find, but they breed faster than you could kill them.  Others, like Herpes are attacked by our bodies defense until the virus is under control.  The remaining viruses hided where our defenses can't attack or find them.  When our defenses weekend, they come out again.  Others are like HIV.  Your body can kill them, but if the virus are able to make a foothold in our body, it attacks our immune system, therefor our body can't kill them anymore.
627823
You probably mean "why can't we kill viruses?" Right?\n\nThe problem is that viruses tend to live inside host cells. To destroy the virus you need to destroy the cell.  Viruses also modify cell receptors so they can't properly work, which limits the ability to find something that can both penetrate the cell and kill the virus without damaging the functions of the cell.
445823
Most of these have deadly viruses. You have to be exceedingly careful.
843543
Antibiotics kill targeted bacteria cells by either interfering with the cell membrane formation, killing organelles, or stopping cell division.\n\nViruses are different from bacteria cells - instead of a cell membrane, they have a hard protein coat. In fact all they are is a hard protein coat with DNA jammed inside. They are also very very small. Many scientists would tell you that they aren't even living things. \n\nAntibiotics do not work against viruses because viruses do not have soft cell membranes or organelles to kill. They don't multiply by themselves either (They inject their DNA into real cells and get their hosts to do the work)
638229
viruses can infect bacteria. bacteria on the other hand, are too big to have any effect on viruses. \n\nbacteria are capable of self-repoduction, while viruses depend on its host cell for replication.
683982
Because bacteria and viruses cause many diseases and people often confuse them. The way they reproduce is the primary functional difference.\n\nThey differ greatly in size. Viruses are normally much smaller. \n\nBacteria are complex compared to viruses. A typical bacterium has a rigid cell wall and a thin membrane surrounding cytoplasm inside the cell. A bacterium contains all of the genetic information needed to make copies of itself. Bacteria also have tools necessary for copying DNA so bacteria can reproduce. Some have threadlike structures called flagella that they use to move. \n\n All viruses have a protein coat and a core of genetic material, either DNA or RNA. And that's it.\n\nViruses have to invade other cells and take their cellular machinery to reproduce. Viruses invade by attaching to a cell and injecting their genes or by being swallowed up by the cell. \n   \nT viral genes tell the bacterium to begin making new virus parts. These parts come together to make whole new viruses inside the bacterium. \n\nEventually so many new viruses are made that the E. coli bursts open and dies, releasing all those new viruses to infect more cells!
613810
Antibiotics work on the protein in a cell's membrane, usually denaturing the proteins and causing the cell to rupture.\n\nVirus do not have a cell membrane. They are not actually living, but instead take over the operations within a host cell. In order for an antibiotic to work on a virus, it would have to rupture the cell membrane of the host cell. In that case, the antibiotic would be toxic, and probably more deadly than the viral infection.
359112
You first have to realize that anitbiotics usually work by targeting some necessary life process that goes on within a cell. It could protein production (aka Translation), it could target gene expression (aka Transcription) or other processes like membrane and cell wall production. These are by far the most common targets for antibiotics (with protein production and cell wall production making up the biggest bulk of the targets.)\n\nAs far as viruses go, you have to realize that viruses don't do these things on their own. So you can't target something that doesn't exist in the agent you want to fight off.\n\nYou see viruses are obligate intracellular pathogens. Which means that have to invade a living cell in order to reproduce. Because viruses don't have the machinery to make their own proteins or transcribe their own genes they have to hijack the machinery of the cell they infect to do it for them.\n\nThis should make it easy to understand why we can't developer antiviral medications that work the same way antibiotics work to help rid our bodies of viral infections. If we develop a drug that stops viral protein production, because it is using the same machinery we normally use, we would in effect be killing all our cells, not just the ones that have viruses in them. These types of drugs would be way to toxic to our healthy cells.\n\nYou might ask yourself, well then why do antibiotics work on bacteria if they are targeting processes inside of bacteria that we need to do also (ie. protein production or cell membrane production)? The answer to that is evolution. Enough evolutionary time has passed that the processes we use to do these things aren't similar enough to cause cross reactivity. As time passes, things change. That's the basis for evolution. The longer two organisms have time to diverge from one another the more able researchers are able to use those differences to treat if one chooses to.\n\nIn the case of bacteria. We can take advantage of the differences between them and us to get rid of them if they infect us.
691030
Viruses are said to be both living and non-living because it is simply a matter of opinion. Scientists can't really agree as to what viruses really are, (they don't belong to any of the five kingdoms you know!).\nSome people say that they are non-living because they aren't cells and don't metabolise, they are merely a bundle of DNA or RNA in a protein capsid.\nHowever they must survive, thus they invade other cells and use the cell to replicate their own genetic material. So the fact that they reproduce (even in the simplest way) has caused other scientists to regard them as living.\nThis duality is unique to viruses (as far as I know!) and is a sign of a primitive organism not an evolved one.\nThink about it, if something is so siple people don't know whether it is alive or dead it can't be very evolved
1010410
protein molecules serve as antibodies to fight of any foreigners such as bacteria and viruses
1014480
Viruses enter your body from other bodily fluids, whether it be blood or saliva, excrement or vomit.  Viruses generally travel easier in the medium they affect, AIDS is blood-borne, and while it's possible a blood to blood transfer would infect you with a common cold or flu, it's generally spread by saliva. Generally viruses cannot survive for long outside of a host organism.\n\nYour body is under attack by viruses constantly, many times you will receive a virus and not even know because your body is able to fight it off before it can affect you. Besides the obvious, visible or physical symptoms of an infection, a doctor can test for anti-bodies to see if you've been infected. The main reason we give vaccinations is so your body can fight off a weakened or dead virus and learn to make the anti-bodies to defeat it for the next time you are infected by it. However some viruses can remain dormant for long periods of time and even tests cannot show their presence, since the viral load (amount of virus particles) is so low.  \n\nOn a side note, contrary to what was said above virus are NOT organisms. By the definitions of life it is not alive, technically it is an obligate intracellular parasite. This is for a few reasons, but the big ones are that they are not cellular based and they cannot reproduce (by themselves). They do share characteristics with living things, such as the use of DNA/RNA and the ability to evolve.
420430
Supposedly we have "created" viruses and bacteria that are resistant to our treatments. It happens when you don't take all of your medicine a doctor gives you, the medicine starts to act but when you stop (if you don't take it all), the bacteria now have the "information" on that medicine and they then mutate to make themselves immune to it.
912259
No! Your body needs all that energy to fight the bacterias, do try to avoid all kinds of vigourous activities until you're fine. Or your illness could just drag on longer.
261522
For one thing, they differ greatly in size. The biggest viruses are only as large as the tiniest bacteria. \n\nAnother difference is their structure. Bacteria are complex compared to viruses. \n\nWhich brings us to the main difference between viruses and bacteria—the way they reproduce.\n\nBacteria contain the genetic blueprint (DNA) and all the tools (ribosomes, proteins, etc.) they need to reproduce themselves. \n\nViruses are moochers. They contain only a limited genetic blueprint and they don't have the necessary building tools. They have to invade other cells and hijack their cellular machinery to reproduce. Viruses invade by attaching to a cell and injecting their genes or by being swallowed up by the cell. \n\nCheck out the site below.
417535
Mostly because of bacteriophages (a type of virus), their natural *predators*. For every bacteria, there are 10 phage particles. And phages are very specific, there are even phages that *attack* archeobacteria.
415464
Viruses need to be inside of a  host cell (human, bacteria, plant etc.) to reproduce. So to get inside the host they have surface proteins (sticking out of a lipid bilayer-just like most mammalian cells) that are able to trick the host cell into letting it inside, that's where it does the damage to the host. ---To simplify the virus needs to have a Protein Coating that is similar to the Protein Receptors on its host cell in order to infect it.---