There are a bunch of reasons.. . It doesn't have anything to do with the number of viruses vs bacteria out there, they are both legion.. . Viruses invade your cells and hijack it as a vessel to reproduce. So they aren't always vulnerable to external toxins.. . Viruses are smaller than bacteria. Viruses aren't whole living cells. They really aren't easily destroyed. For the most part, antivirals or T-cells are specific to a virus.. . Bacteria are easier to destroy because there are so many ways to kill them. More complex = more vulnerabilities. Whole cell = more vulnerabilities.. . That means that essentially for every (type of) virus, you need a specific treatment. Many (types of) bacteria can be killed by one anti-bacterial.. . Anti-bacterials generally create an environment that the bacteria can't tolerate. They are so unlike human/animal cells that many of the things that kill them, don't kill our cells. Unfortunately nearly everything that kills viruses also kill our cells.. . Finally, those naturally occurring enemies to viruses (called phages) are seen by our immune systems as foreign. Because of this, shortly after a phage is administered to a person, the person's body begins to kill them. Repeated doses soon have no further effect. This is not true to most antibacterials since our bodies do not view those toxins as living invaders.. . Interestingly phages are specific to a virus and consume only that one (type of) virus.. . Currently the only truely effective way to fight viral infections is by producing a natural immune response before a person can be exposed to the virus. This is done either by exposing them to a weakened/dead version of the virus, or to parts of the virus (or chemicals of the same molecular shape).. . Once your immune system knows how to fight that virus in advance, that infection won't have a chance to take hold.. . Now to make things worse, viruses are very promiscous. They break appart and combine easily with other viruses they encounter. So new viruses are created all the time.. . Bacteria also mutate, but less quickly. Bacteria's strength is that they can survive in many different environments, viruses pretty much die outside the host environment.