Why are antibiotics not effective for viral disease?

Explanation

**Step-by-Step Solution:**

1. **Understanding Antibiotics:**
- Antibiotics are medicines specifically designed to target and kill bacteria. They work by interfering with the bacteria's biochemical processes.

2. **Mechanism of Action:**
- Antibiotics block specific biochemical pathways in bacteria. These pathways are essential for the bacteria's growth and reproduction. By disrupting these processes, antibiotics effectively kill the bacteria or inhibit their growth.

3. **Nature of Viruses:**
- Viruses are fundamentally different from bacteria. They do not have the same biochemical pathways that antibiotics target. Instead, viruses rely on host cells to replicate and do not possess the complex metabolic processes that antibiotics disrupt.

4. **Biochemical Mechanisms:**
- Viruses have very few biochemical mechanisms of their own. They are simple entities that lack the cellular machinery required for metabolism and reproduction. This means that the standard mechanisms of antibiotics cannot be applied to viruses.

5. **Conclusion:**
- Because antibiotics are designed to target bacterial processes and viruses do not have these processes, antibiotics are ineffective against viral diseases. Therefore, antibiotics cannot treat infections caused by viruses.

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