> I'm sure that it is much more complicated than this, but I wonder how long the virus can remain immune to all previous '99%' cures? Maybe eventually we could come up with enough of these and then administer them all at once.

That's basically what HAART (the technique we've used to treat HIV successfully for the last 25 years) is. People take three antiretrovirals simultaneously. They're designed such that, for the virus to adapt to one, it has to make itself more susceptible to one of the other two.

> They're designed such that, for the virus to adapt to one, it has to make itself more susceptible to one of the other two.

That's not really accurate. HAART works because the 3 drugs are taken simultaneously, and it's extremely unlikely for a virus to get random mutations that confer resistance to all three in one generation.

> That's not really accurate. HAART works because the 3 drugs are taken simultaneously, and it's extremely unlikely for a virus to get random mutations that confer resistance to all three in one generation.

That is literally exactly what I said. The drugs are taken simultaneously, and it is very difficult to develop resistance to all three simultaneously, because becoming more resistant to one means becoming more susceptible to another.

Not sure if it's just miscommunication, or you misunderstand how HAART works, because you said "That is literally exactly what I said", and then in your next sentence repeat the statement that is false, "becoming more resistant to one means becoming more susceptible to another."

For example, suppose you take ATripla, which is a combination of efavirenz, emtricitabine, and tenofovir. If a viral particle has a random mutation that confers resistance to, say, efavirenz, that mutation does not make the virus more susceptible to emtricabine or tenofovir. The fact is the virus was already susceptible to those two drugs (that's why you take tests that specify your viral strain's pre-existing resistances to determine the best drugs for you before you start HAART), so it still is unable to replicate.

It's just a matter of statistics, not that resistance-granting mutations naturally make the virus more susceptible to other drugs.

I believe that's actually somewhat how AIDs treatments have worked. I'm not sure if all are like that but it's pretty much the exact logic.

Yep. Triple therapy is now standard in HIV treatment. The odds of developing mutations to 2-3 agents simultaneously are very low

When I was a teenager, I wrote a connect four game, and my brother would play it. Every time he'd win, I'd jump back into the code. I realized it was a fruitless cat and mouse (not only because the game is trivial) but because of the pacing of my "fixes" -- if I could have had the final version completed before he first played, he might have been stymied, but the iterations seemed to give him an easy path -- he only needed to solve one problem at a time.

Why don't we deliver all antibiotics as a triple? Wouldn't that eliminate antiobiotic resistance?

Antibiotics kill bacteria, not viruses. And that includes desired strains.

Probably for longer than we can keep coming up with chemicals that selectively kill it. After all, if we're not killed by the chemical, then that means it's possible to survive it.

That's not really a meaningful argument. You're talking about a large multi-cellular organism that has tissues, organs, and all that and comparing it to something that doesn't even have cells.