system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: If the Common Cold needs a human host to survive, could we eradicate it from the Earth by telling everyone on the planet to work from home for a week?

I takes roughly a week (I believe) for a human to produce antibodies to fight off the Common Cold.  In that time, it spreads itself to other people.  It mutates over a few months, and then comes back and infects you again, because you don't have antibodies against the new mutation.

So if we all isolated ourselves for a week, we could produce antibodies for the current strains, and kill them all off?  Thus, the world would be cured of the Common Cold forever, right?
gpt
It would take much, much longer than a week and much, much more than just working from home - you wouldn't be able to get groceries, go shopping, there would be no electricity or running water without someone to maintain it. Depending on the virus, they can lay dormant for years at a time before finding a new host. Some people would not be able to eliminate their cold, so they would need to be quarantined forever.

It might be possible, but it would cause total economic collapse and the end of civilization as we know it. Probably not worth it to avoid picking up some kleenex and cough drops.