Comment by schoper | Hacker News Reader

Comment by schoper | Hacker News Reader

Antibiotic resistance shows up among the unhealthiest communities first. They act as the necessary incubators that resistance needs to develop. In a person with a working immune system, the time frame of antibiotic and pathogen contact is very small compared to the time frame of antibiotic and pathogen contact in an immunocompromised patient.

To put the above into simple English: Our problem isn't that we give antibiotics out like candy, it's that we give them to the elderly, people with AIDS, the poor, etc. This massively increases the chance of antibiotic resistance developing.

What can we do about it? To start with, run the numbers, make some cost-benefit calculations, and think about the problem. There may be technical as well as social solutions.

Not thinking about the problem, making it harder for the healthiest people to get antibiotics, and pretending that you are doing something is also a viable option. It's what we're doing now.

> Our problem isn't that we give antibiotics out like candy, it's that we give them to the elderly, people with AIDS, the poor, etc.

Do you realize what you've just said? Are you arguing that we shouldn't have had given antibiotics to people that needed antibiotics?

Also, I don't know how your society is or does, but in our country the poor have a better immune system.

I correctly described the situation. I think it's ugly too. Do you have a fix? Because that's what we need, a fix, not cheap moralizing.

Moralizing doesn't save anyone from gangrene and sepsis and a slow death. It doesn't prevent the diarrhea to dehydration to death sequence. It doesn't do an ounce of good for anyone.

Immunocompromise (poor, sick, elderly, AIDS, etc.) + long-term antibiotic use = Antibiotic resistance.

That equation is death, and we need fixes, not the crap in your comment above.

"Also, I don't know how your society is or does, but in our country the poor have a better immune system."

No doubt you live on Mars or Venus.

I don't know how that works,

God forbid say your dad is sick- Will you go and tell him- 'Dad, you better die for the sake humanity and than take these antibiotics and have you pain reduced'.

If you are poor, will you tell your kid- 'Sorry son, I have to sacrifice you for the sake of humanity, no more antibiotics for you'

The parent comment to yours is correct. Poor have better immune systems, because theirs is trained to handle such situations from their birth than yours and mine which live well sanitized environments and have never been exposed to them before.

That's at least true in a country like India. I'm not sure where you live, poor people dying out of fatal infections is one thing. But its also a fact, some that requires me or you take a sick leave doesn't even bother them.

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