This is a very incorrect and very confused answer with very little of it having any basis in reality. The statement that virus are simple constructs really the only part. Everything else wrong.
Viruses are simple constructs which exist and reproduce by getting into host cells hijacking the host cells systems to reproduce many many of its frequently mutating and recombining self.
They are pretty much hidden from host defenses inside the organism’s own cells. Disabling them is therefore extremely difficult. To clear the infection the body has to kill a bunch of its own cells by recognizing some viral proteins on the cells’ surfaces. Many viruses become permanent residents in hosts. Common examples include the whole herpes family, chickenpox inclusive. The best chance is t have enough antibody on board before infection that the virus’ surface proteins get coated and therefore cannot attach to and get into host cells. Vaccines and past infections can do this in some cases.
Bacterial “shields” are out there, exposed, to be recognized with lots of points of recognition and far from “fuck-off plating.”
The mutation and recombination rate of viruses also serve them well as they turn into forms the body recognizes less and can select for the form that has the most effective magnitude of infection.
That last part is really important. A variant of a virus that kills rapidly will be selected against because the host dies before it can do a great job spreading the virus around into other hosts. There is a sweet spot of taking over enough that production of new viruses is high but not so much so that the host can’t be out there spreading it about. The dead host usually does not spread as well as the live one does.
In fact, a really mature virus won’t kill or significantly impair the host at all, instead staying resident and shedding new virions quietly or at most with mildly annoying ulceration. The Herpesviridae family including herpes simplex (HSV-1 and -2), varicella zoster, and Epstein-Barr, or human papillomavrius (HPV) are so well adapted to the human species that initial infection by them shows either no signs at all or very transient or benign symptoms, and in most people they often have no health impact or functional impairment for decades until potentially causing various forms of cancer or other genetic dysfunctions generally well past normal child-bearing age. The really virulent viruses such as influenza A and B or the hemorrhagic RNA virus familes are so damaging specifically because they have recently crossed over from another animal to humans and are poorly adapted, which causes them to be very poor infiltrators into their hosts, limiting normal distribution and reproduction. By their nature, viruses require hosts to provide metabolic and reproductive functions and will die out if they cannot evolve to co-exist with their hosts.
Bacteria, on the other hand, are not nearly as selective about their hosts; they can reproduce independently as long as they have a supply of nutrients and the right environment. Althogh the misuse of antibiotic drugs has exacerbated the development of antimicrobal-resistant bacteria, the development of resistance to treatment is a natural evolutionary response for bacteria. Frankly, traditional antibiotics and natural antimicrobal agents were always going to have a limited functional life, and the long term path to effective antibiotic treatments is the genetic engineering of bacteriophages, although those may have their own problems with persistance and pathology.
I’ve heard similar statistics postulated about malaria, which is caused by neither a bacteria nor a virus, but a microscopic parasite. However, malaria cannot exist without Aedes aegypti, which can only survive in warm climates, whereas smallpox could exist in any climate and was also readily spread person-to-person.
I think that if you looked at the diseases that ravaged the New World post-Columbus, viral epidemics dominated. Measles, influenza and smallpox spread from human to human with no intermediate animal reservoir needed.
Then why can’t the immune system stop flesh eating bacteria? Or malaria? Or bubonic plague 50% of the time? I’m guessing each of the related organisms is well armored against attack by the immune system and hard to kill.
p.s. The reason Ebola is such a deadly disease is because it makes a beeline for the dendritic cells, which can best be described this way: If the immune system was an orchestra, the dendritic cells would be the conductor. The rest of the immune system knows something’s wrong, but can’t figure out just what right away, so it goes into overdrive and creates a phenomenon known as cytokine storm, which is what makes people so dreadfully ill in most cases.
Some Ebola patients don’t get that sick and others may even be asymptomatic, which is also being researched. This has been going on for a long time with Lassa fever, another hemorrhagic fever that has long been known to exist in western and central Africa.
Some of the damage caused by flesh-eating bacteria is from toxins generated by the bacteria that remain even when the bacteria die and continue to cause damage. Bubonic plague bacteria can actually survive being engulfed by certain types of immune cells, after which they kill them from the inside. Malaria is not a bacteria but a multi-cell parasite with a very complicated lifestyle that involves living inside different body cells, making it both a hidden and a moving target.
Sounds like my analogy of ‘fuck off plating’ was reasonably correct. It’s a lot harder for an antibody to disable a machine that is protected by a cell wall than a tiny viral particle.
First, in general, the immune system DOES stop the various bacteria that cause necrotizing fasciitis (which get referred to as “flesh eating bacteria”). The bacteria most commonly associates with necrotizing fasciitis is Group A (beta hemolytic) streptococcus. Many many people are exposed to this bacteria every day. Some get sore throats from that exposure (yes, it’s the strep of strep throat, which the body actually can fight off without antibiotics, even if treatment speeds recovery up), fewer minor skin infections. In all of these individuals the immune system stops the bacteria just fine.
A very few, most often those with some sort of compromise (alcoholism, drug abuse, diabetes, obesity, impaired immune systems, impaired peripheral vasculature, so on and sometimes in combination) can get necrotizing fasciitis from a skin infection with this germ. But even these compromised hosts usually do not. Usually they fight off an exposure just fine. Just not always.
And as Broomstick notes, the pathophysiology in cases of necrotizing fasciitis is often more based on the toxins than on the bacteria.
Her other comments are also, unsurprisingly, spot on. Yersia pestis steals the from the virus playbook and hides within the host’s own cells, multiplying there protected not by “fuck off plating” but by the hosts own immune cells. And yeah, malaria not bacteria.
I like that phrase “fuck off plating” even though I can’t imagine a lot of microbiology professors using it.
Some people are immune from certain bacterial or viral diseases. 95% of the human population is naturally immune to Hansen’s disease (AKA leprosy) and some people also appear to be immune to AIDS, and this seems to be linked to ancestors who were immune from bubonic plague, whatever disease that might really have been; some people believe that “plague” was actually a viral disease. I don’t fully agree but it’s an interesting theory.
That’s the reason the 1918 flu pandemic killed so many people who would otherwise be considered at lower risk: young adults who seemingly had no risk factors. Though to the best of my knowledge, the “Spanish Flu” never made anyone bleed out of every orifice like Ebola can…
It seems to me that vaccine-preventable illnesses are mostly viral. Obviously there are exceptions like the BCG vaccine for tuberculosis, a pneumonia vaccine (I got that a couple years back), and so on. So: is it possible that bacterial illnesses are more dangerous simply because you don’t develop an immunity, so you can get the same thing again? And why are there so few vaccines against bacteria?
In other words, if we got rid of antibiotics and vaccines, but otherwise kept the same level of clean water / sewer service etc. we currently have, which would kill more?
Note that in my mental meanderings, I’m deeming “bacteria” to include anything microscopic that can cause infection, such as amoebas, protozaoans, and fungus, and I’m deeming “antibiotics” to include anything that treats those other categories as well.
And for deaths due to viruses: At least in some cases, the actual death isn’t from the virus itself, but due to infections the virus makes you more prone to. Opportunistic infections due to HIV-weakened immune systems, secondary infections due to flu (I frequently get bronchitis which requires antibiotics if I come down with a respiratory virus), and so on. If that happens, do we say you die of the virus, or the other illness?
To whomever said viruses aren’t spread all that casually: tell my family. That dose of “food poisoning” I brought back after a weekend away last year spread to members who hadn’t even been in the same room as I was.
Diphtheria, tetanus, hemophilus, and pertussis are all bacterial diseases. Immunity is conferred by use of antitoxins, toxoids, and cellular components.
And they are all highly contagious, except for tetanus which is a universal component of soil bacteria. I was once involved in treating a case of it, and hope I never see or even hear about anything like that ever again.
Not as dramatically as ebola, no, but cytokine storms can cause what is often termed “excessive bleeding” in lists of symptoms. For that matter, liver failure and the “black pox” variant of smallpox can do that as well, along with other things.
You can achieve some immunity to bacterial diseases. You can also lose your immunity to viral disease, either acquired by immunization or naturally, if you go long enough without a booster of some sort, be that a shot or an exposure.
Bacteria are more complex life forms with more defenses and strategies for staying alive than viruses have.
I’m guessing bacteria - we forget how things like sinus infections, UTI’s, and bad teeth used to be fatal a lot more often in the past than they are now.
Well… OK… but that’s not how the medical world defines those things. Bacteria are one-celled organisms of simple structure. Amoebas, protozoans, fungus, etc. are more complex, either single-celled but with complex inner structures like a nucleus, mitochondria, and other organelles or multi-cellular creatures.
An interesting question. My sister who is a doctor specializing with end-of-life care can go on for quite a bit about what is put on the “cause of death” line in official paperwork and what she considers stupid or appropriate.
Approximately half the people I know – including myself – would be dead if not for modern antibiotics. It really is something that makes you go :eek: when you think about it.
I read recently that the eradication of measles alone cut the child mortality rate in half. Exactly why it was so deadly was also not understood until the past few years; it turns out that the measles virus causes a sort of amnesia of the immune system, so things the child (or adult) was immune from are now contractable, and flareups of latent tuberculosis were not uncommon.
There’s an old drug that’s been used experimentally to combat cytokine storm. It’s - are you ready for this? - gemfibrozil, which has long been used to treat high cholesterol. I don’t know how or who came up with the idea to try it for this.
A cursory Google-fu states that gemfibrozil also has a very specific anti-inflammatory action, and that’s why it’s being experimentally used for this purpose.
Yeah. Having measles, as opposed to being vaccinated for it, causes your immune system to basically look for measles, and try to fight off measles, and nothing else. Try to explain that to an anti-vaxxer who thinks “natural” immunity is best. I did once. Never again. It was like trying to explain the Renaissance to my cat.
Also, measles can cause a deadly encephalopathy that can flare up as long as six years after recovery-- it usually doesn’t-- I mean, most people don’t get it, and those that do have it flare up within a week or two. But still, how awful, to think your child has recovered, then have them go into a sudden decline that involves terrible suffering, and finally die.
Just to make that response extremely clear. Those are the targets of the primary childhood vaccines, DTaP and Hib. Add Prevnar for childhood pneumococcal disease and Menactra for meningococcal disease, also bacteria. Viral ones too - HepB, MMR, Varivax, HepA, HPV vaccine. Vaccine are targeted against both well.
Get rid of all antibiotics and vaccines, keep clean water, sewerage, food safety, and which group would do more harm?
Not sure.
Another hard question to answer: which has the greater beneficial impact, antibiotics or vaccines? I don’t know for that one either. I’d guess vaccines.
