Viral and bacterial illnesses

[KidCaneGoat]

Imagine you go to the doctors with an illness, say a sore throat or ear infection. Why do they give meds (antibiotics) if it’s bacterial but not if it’s viral? I know antibiotics don’t work on viruses but there must be antivirals too. It’s more wondering why we assume that if it’s viral then our body will fight the infection. But if it’s bacterial we need medicine to help. Do our bodies/kids bodies fight viruses differently from bacteria.

For a start, anti-viral medicines aren't available for everything. Most viruses mutate too fast, and who knows the consequences of medicating against them -- more dangerous mutations of viruses, weakening our immune systems etc.?
Doctors also don't always dish out antibiotics for infections -- they make a judgement depending on the risks to the patient. It's common knowledge that antibiotics make very little difference to ear infections, shortening the duration of the illness only by a day or two.
Unpleasant though it is to be unwell, as long as you're not in real danger, it's best to let your immune system do its job.

First, many bacterial infections are (or should be) left to the immune system to deal with - over reliance on antibiotics is a massive problem. We don’t always ‘need’ medicine to help with bacterial infections.

Second, antivirals do operate very differently from antibiotics because viruses behave differently from bacteria, making designing effective antivirals more difficult.

For example, for Tamiflu to be effective against flu it must be taken within two days of symptoms beginning.

Viruses are completely different, they change far too quickly in many cases for effective treatments to be developed.

Also, on the whole, your body can shake viruses, whereas a nasty infection might need a bit of help. There's no point taking medication - of ANY kind - unless you're not going to get better without it.

Thanks everyone, that’s interesting to know about viruses mutating quickly. And I didn’t know that about tamiflu. @BlackInk I only found out that about ear infections recently. I’ve always been offered them for kids infections until the last doc I saw who said there wasn’t any point. Same with tonsillitis as well, even bacterial. Only shortens it by an average of 16 hours. I wish I’d known that before. I do worry about antibiotic resistance and so have been wondering why docs are so quick to prescribe them for bacterial infections when they trust our bodies to get over it if it’s viral.