I am in the midst of a cold right now, and the sneezing fits prompted me to ask this question. Is sneezing a defence mechanism of the body, or a reproductive mechanism of the virus?
The former. After all, you sneeze for many reasons besides having a cold.
Both, if either.
The body evolved the sneeze to clear the airway when it’s irritated.
The virus evolved to irritate the airway because it facilitates getting spread.
The body has not evolved a sufficiently nuanced response to stop the sneezing mechanism if irritation is viral to save others from catching the cold. Really, this fine a detail ought to take s long to evolve that faster viral evolution finds a way around.
But to say these are the reasons the body and the virus did these things is anthropomorphizing them; neither has any plans or rational to the evolution, and we are also guessing as to what encouraged each feature to evolve.
Leastaways, that’s my take.