You can’t CURE a virus. You can eradicate a bacterial infection. Viruses have to be dealt with naturally by the body. It’s the whole reason there’s no “cure for the common cold.” The common cold is a... wait for it... virus.
In theory there could be one someday.
Actually, the common cold is caused by any of over 200 different viruses from multiple families. The reason there isn’t a cure is because any cure would either involve a broad spectrum treatment that works against all 200+ viruses or it would involve identifying the specific causal agent and having a specific cure for each of over 200 different ones. Either would be extremely expensive. Nobody’s going to pay $30,000 to cure or prevent a cold.
And yes you can treat a viral infection. We have antiviral drugs for all sorts of viral infections. They typically work either by inhibiting viral replication or some other critical viral function. And the overall effect is the same as using antibiotics for a bacterial infection: you reduce the ability of the pathogen to operate in the body until the body can clear the infection. Antibiotics don’t magically make all the bacteria disappear; they reduce the infection to a point that the body can overwhelm it.
Who taught you biology they failed you terribly. Viri can be killed. They also can be inhibited from reproduction. The same way an antibiotic inhibits bacterial reproduction and thus ends the infection. Antiviral drugs inhibit the virus ability to reproduce at the cellular level and thus ends the viral replication chain and the ensuring infection. Same effect different mechanisms. Protease inhibitors work by locking the spike protein from invading the cell and the virus they cannot replicate. The drugs that have turned HIV from a 100% killer in to a treatable condition are all PI drugs. Covid has HIV spike proteins how they got there is a matter of debate but fact is they are there. It is no shock and to be expected that protease inhibitors would also work on Covid with the identical spike proteins. It’s not some vast conspiracy it’s just science. Pfizer is testing the equivalent of penicillin for Covid nothing more nothing less. Leave the crap politics aside they have no place in science. Pfizer is testing a solid scientific approach to stopping infection.