In my fantasy world vampires exist, and most of the intelligent races can be turned into one. I try to make everything in this word kind of explainable by science, at least possible in our Earth.
I've encountered a problem: how would vampires avoid catching diseases when ingesting blood? Vampirism is a virus that can spread by blood and saliva, but if vampires needed the intelligent race's blood to survive, they would easily contract blood transmitted diseases. This would make it extremely hard for them to survive. A bit about my vampires:
- If you survive a vampire bite, you will probably become one.
- Vampires don't live longer than normal. They live as long as they would if they weren't infected.
- Vampirism is a virus.
- There is a slow transformation a vampire has to endure, like canines falling one by one and larger ones growing in their place.
- They can't survive just on blood, they need other things too, but the virus demands blood.
- They can barely survive by drinking animal blood.
Would this type of vampire be viable? And what's a thing that could protect them from getting terribly ill by drinking a normal meal?
Edit: Yes, by them getting ill I mean by illnesses carried by the bitten ones, and the vampires are still alive and their bodies work very much like they did before the virus, the only main changes are on the digestive system.