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A comment on Covid drug drives viral mutations – and now some want to halt its use. Parent comment

Re:Covid drug drives viral mutations – and now some want to ... by woke_neolib on Thursday February 09, 2023 @02:02AM (#34720613)
Phage is short for bacteriophage. They are viruses that attack bacteria. As far as I know there are not viruses that target other viruses, except as a side effect - the viral life cycle is dependent on a host, and a coronavirus has little to offer a bacteriophage. Similarly, antibiotics target bacteria, not viruses. Antivirals often have very different mechanisms of action.
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Re:Covid drug drives viral mutations – and now some want to ... by etiam on Thursday February 09, 2023 @09:16AM (#34724185)
Well described.

There are viruses which affect other viruses with arguably more than a side effect ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virophage ), but for natural reasons it seems a bit off from fully analogous to bacteriophages.

Coronaviruses are at the high end of size and complexity among RNA-viruses, but it's still hard for me to see that virophages would be relevant to combat SARS-CoV-2.

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