Great post and certainly a huge effort to condense the science behind in such a readable and digestable manner.
One thing I would like to add: there are in fact several antiviral drugs and they are acting on key steps within the life cycle of (some!) viruses, not just on symptoms. Even proteins encoded by the viral DNA or RNA have been successfully targeted by small molecules which are on the market since years. Check for the antiviral drugs used in HIV therapy, these are the most well known ones. And there are vaccines available, that protect us against many otherwise deadly viruses, too.
On another note, it can be speculated that viruses played their roles in our evolution too, as our genomes contain considerable amounts of viral DNA as a result of horizontal gene transfer.
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