system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
If the symptoms of an illness are typically the body creating a hostile environment to get rid of the infection (runny nose, fever, etc.), what do viruses/bacteria actually do?

Or, what would an illness look like if our immune system didn't do all of those things to destroy the viruses/bacteria?
gpt
Bacteria actually "just wanna live". Since they are living cells hey also have a metabolism like any other living cell, plant, animal, human. What makes them infectious is the materials they secrete - these are poisonous to your body. Of course not all bacteria do this or secrete other stuff that is no danger to your body. So it depends what bacteria you have.

Virii in turn don't actually "live". They are more like dead things like a stone. However, they possess detectors on the outside and blueprints of themselves inside. Once their detector docks with the right counterpart (here a certain cell) they inject their blueprint (virus DNA or RNA) that reprograms the cell to just build more virus shells and blueprints and assembles them into new virii. Then the cell collapses and unleashes the virii into the world.