Can we overcome common cold?

The other day, I heard that anyone solves either cancer or common cold completely would get the Nobel prize. And these issues are still under trial.

The reason why common cold hardly can be cured by medicines is that the common cold is not a single disease. There are over a hundred viruses to cause the common cold. Also, antiviral substances are more difficult to be developed than antibacterial agents.

In recent years, some researchers are struggling to establish the solution for the common cold. Some substances are expected to inhibit the replication of the viruses in the human body. Others study the protective peptides which block the infection itself.

The Conversation: We have a good chance of curing the common cold in next ten years – a scientist explains

They are promised ideas, I feel. But, there is another issue about the medication against the common cold. How can we distinguish cold which can be cured by medicine from many other diseases?

In Japan, many patients want to get medication when getting a common cold despite there is no definite solution. As a result, some physicians are willing to prescribe antibacterial medicines as well as other meaningless pills to the patients. It is no different than a waste of medical resource.

Nowadays, on the other hand, flu can be identified with a test-tool. The development of the toolkit contributed to reducing many inappropriate prescriptions, I guess.
But the specificity is not 100%. Identifying the viruses is a big challenge as well as the solution to eliminate them.