Hey Mom - Are you aware of how many areas in the USA do not have even as much as we do? Come on - irresponsible? I grew up in the country and we knew how to take care of most illnesses and injuries. If a family had one crisis a year that required intervention it was a big deal. I believe the people here are just now getting used to running to the doctor for every little thing.
Right now I have a respiratory infection with a bad cough - gringo's think I should go to the doctor and get antibiotics - which of course don't work on a virus (see below). Too many people have taken too many drugs for things that can't be treated by these drugs that those bacterial infections that can be treated have built up an immunity to them.
The locals tell me to take honey with lime and some say add garlic to it. I've asked for Hall's Eucalyptus lounges and no one knows what I mean. The cherry ones are just like candy.
Antivirals
Since viruses can't live outside the person or animal they infect, they are much harder to kill off. Our immune system can find and kill many of the viruses that attack us, but sometimes a virus can multiply and overwhelm the immune system before the immune system "comes up to full speed". We immunize or vaccinate people against diseases -- mostly viral, but some bacterial -- so that their immune systems do have that head start. That seems to be the most succesful way to kill viruses permanently. An example is smallpox, which has been eradicated due mainly to the use of vaccines against it -- without which the virus killed thousands, if not millions, in epidemics. Some viruses, such as HIV (which specifically attacks the immune system), are very hard to become immune to, but a great deal of research is being aimed at producing a working vaccine for those diseases.
Unfortunately, since viruses are completely dormant outside a "host" (an infected human or animal), they can't be attacked biologically unless they infect someone. The immune system can't go after the virus unless it's in the body, and all of the antiviral medicines we have work only when the virus is trying to reproduce in the body. We can destroy viruses in the environment if we know they are there (an example is using household bleach to kill HIV that might be on equipment contaminated with body fluids -- but bleach won't kill HIV in the body, even if we could get it into the body safely). Once the virus is in the body, however, all we can do is let the immune system do its work, and in very rare cases (perhaps half-a-dozen viruses at most) give drugs that slow down the infection so that the body can clear it out more easily.
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