4 ms·
I mean, that's based on a particularly aggressive route of transmission. I think the much more useful examples are to read old historical accounts of every day
by Fomite 8y ago
I mean, that's based on a particularly aggressive route of transmission.
I think the much more useful examples are to read old historical accounts of every day life. People died of things we now simply assume to be safe - shaving, for example. There are all manner of modern interactions we have with the world and especially the medical system where the expectation is "I won't die during this" - and much of that relies on access to effective antibiotics.
Antibiotic resistance is unlikely to cause an epidemic in the same way as flu. What it's much more likely to do is make people have worse outcomes forever. You won't get gonorrhea any more than you do right now - but if you do it's not a quick course of antibiotics. It's a painful infection followed by the distinct possibility of sterility.
- candiodari 8y agoThat describes the steady-state situation, but about once a generation you can expect at least an epidemic, maybe a pandemic.
- Fomite 8y agoNot for endemic pathogens. You get small, stochastic outbreaks in specific populations, and you can have a global rise in infection rates, but many of the diseases we are talking about don't work anything like influenza. There's no once a generation, massive mortality pandemic of Acinetobacter.