system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
What symptoms of the virus are the virus and what are the symptoms of the body defending against the virus?
gpt
The answer to that is as varied as viruses themselves, but some things are consistent.

Cough - is usually your body's response to foreign matter, like phlegm, in the throat or lungs

Sneezing - the same, but in the nose and upper throat

Inflammation - your body flushing an area with fresh blood to attack a pathogen

Fever heating the blood in order to kill pathogens.

Nausea - expelling foreign matter from the stomach

Diarrhea - expelling foreign matter from the intestines.

While each of these processes can be hijacked by a virus to help propagate itself, they are often not caused directly by the virus, but rather by your immune response to them.

So, the next question, why not just suppress the immune response, since the above symptoms are what tends to cause the death of people (especially fever)?

And the answer is that the body uses the symptoms to fight off infections that oftentimes destroy healthy cells, and by allowing a virus to run amok in the system, you can end up with serious health problems as your muscles, blood, bones, organs, and brain are attacked and destroyed, one cell at a time.