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331 points breve | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.206s | source
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giancarlostoro ◴[] No.45027158[source]
Wont viruses just adapt and now we've got worse viruses as a result? Isn't this kind of why doctors don't like to prescribe antibiotics too often, because they become ineffective in the long run.

I'm genuinely asking, I'm a simple software dev not a doctor.

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thyristan ◴[] No.45027317[source]
Maybe, maybe not. Antibiotic resistance develops because antibiotics are only somewhat deadly to bacteria, so natural selection can occur and bacteria develop resistance over time. There are some antibiotic/bacteria combinations where this doesn't happen, because the respective antibiotic is so deadly to that special kind of bacteria, that no survivors can pass on their slightly increased resistance.

And bacteria self-replicate, whereas a virus needs to infect a cell and be reproduced by that cell. Some antiviral mechanisms attack the reproduction proteins that the human cells use, which the virus cannot do without. And the human cells don't have reproductive pressure to replicate viruses, quite the contrary.

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1. jojobas ◴[] No.45032529[source]
Antibiotic resistance costs bacteria dearly. The proteins they lose (typically related to cell membrane building) are honed by millions of years of evolution. The resistance mutations end up being inferior, slowing down growth and perhaps other capabilities.