Sometimes, yes, other times it's the virus hijacking and disrupting too many cells that causes problems.
For example, and a very crude approximation, if the virus infects 20% of your lung cells then your capacity to breathe is down by 20%. Losing lung capacity is normally considered quite a bad thing and from personal experience a few months ago wasn't fun at all.
It's things like this that made it so dangerous for frontline care staff in regimes that didn't give a shit about PPE. Through being heavily exposed to it a front line carer could start with such a high initial infection of the virus that there was barely time for their body's immune response and the natural repairing of damaged cells to allow for normal biological function while their body fought it off. Add in being overworked and stressed as well and it was often a recipe for (fatal) disaster.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
