francisofascii parent
Is a fair analogy, antibiotics kill, whereas antivirals use birth control? So viruses would have to find a way to circumvent the replication inhibitors or potentially find a noval way to replicate.
Some classes of antibiotics use birth control - rather than killing bacteria directly, they inhibit reproduction.
I think the biggest difference is that bacteria can react to a treatment, while viruses don't have the capacity to react. If you've stopped a virus from replicating, it's essentially dead. A bacterium may have defensive measures it can take. It could form an endospore and try to wait things out. If you've stopped it from reproducing, as it ages it might start accumulating free radicals that increase DNA damage, leading to a higher chance of it mutating to resist the antibiotic. Etc.
> I think the biggest difference is that bacteria can react to a treatment, while viruses don't have the capacity to react.
Bacteria also swap genes between themselves [0], whereas two viral particles sitting on the same Petri dish are too inert/simple for that. That represents an additional way for adaptive tricks to spread.