Conventional wisdom, at least when I was in school, was that there were no vaccines against bacteria and no antibiotics against viruses. Is this still the case?
A few years ago, I got an inoculation against pneumonia–usually caused by a bacterium, while tamiflu and another agent hass effects against the flu virus.
Antibiotics still don’t work against viruses. For viruses, you use anti-virals.
There’s a vaccine against Haemophilus influenza B (Hib) bacteria, which can cause meningitis and pneumonia (usually in children). There are other vaccines against pneumoccocus bacteria, which can cause pneumonia.
Cholera Vaccine used to be standard treatment for travellers in less developed parts of the world.
And we have tons of medications used against HIV, typically called antiretrovirals. They block various parts of the viral reproduction process.
Vaccine is a general term for a preventive medicine.
Antibiotic tends to specific to bacterial.
So there are Vaccines against Bacterial Infection and against Viral Infection.
Antibiotics are used to treat bacterial infections.
Anti-Virals are used to treat viral infections. (These are recent and not everyone knows these exist.) Go back a decade or two and viruses had no medical counteraction beyond treating the symtoms.
Antivirals date back to the 1950’s when interferon was first recognized as a potential agent. Further antivirals were developed in the 1960’s, mainly against herpes-type viruses. Amantadine’s anti-influenza A activity was noted not too long after. Many other antivirals were tested in this era, but found to be not effective enough, or too toxic.
But it wasn’t really until the 1980’s when these began to be employed regularly to fight viral infections, with varied results.
Now, it is common to prescribe antivirals for not only herpes, but influenza, HIV, Hepatitis B and C, and many others.
Vaccines date back to Edward Jenner, who developed a vaccine for smallpox based on exposure to cowpox: vaccine is from vaccus(for cow). Vaccines are usually employed against viruses, but in principle they can be used to train the immune system against parasites or bacteria as well.
Antibiotics are used against bacteria and attack the biology of bacteria, antivirals do the same against viruses.
One approach primes the immune system for action, the other acts directly against the pathogen.
Antivirals work by preventing replication of the virus. Antibiotics work by either destroying the cell membrane, chromosome, or preventing replication. So antivirals have only one mode of action: preventing replication: Suite 101 - How-tos, Inspiration and Other Ideas to Try