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Comment by grapesodaaaaa | Hacker News Reader

Is it really true that we have “worse” viruses, or that they are adapting to our modern antibiotic regime & reverting to the status quo?

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Antibiotics have never killed any viruses ever. They are exclusively for treating bacterial infections (which are generally worse by a lot).

Azithromycin (rhinovirus, influenza A, Zika), clarithromycin (influenza A, rhinovirus), doxycycline (dengue, Zika), minocycline (West Nile), teicoplanin/dalbavancin (Ebola, MERS/SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2), rifampin/rifamycins (orthopoxviruses), aminoglycosides (HSV-2, influenza A, Zika), salinomycin/monensin (influenza A/B, coronaviruses incl. SARS-CoV-2), nanchangmycin (Zika, West Nile, dengue, chikungunya), nitroxoline (mpox), and some fluoroquinolones have all shown antiviral properties.

And no, strep throat is not worse than ebola.

I think they used “generally” on purpose, to make a general observation. Of course, there exist viral infections that are worse than the most common bacterial ones.

There’s some ambiguity in their comment because it isn’t obvious what we’re sort of… averaging over, but I think they clearly don’t mean that there no serious viral infections exist.

Citations?

The examples that you gave that I checked were not supportive of your assertions.

Agh. That’s what I meant.

What I was trying to ask is if you took pre-antibiotic staph and resistant staph, rolled back in time and infected two people, would one be worse than the other?

ie - are they harder for the immune system to fight, or just resistant to antibiotics.

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