This is one of the few fairly clear cases in real life where you could make a utilitarian argument, though. Sacrifice a few lives now to save more in the long run. I wouldn't want to be the government that has to dictate this policy, though. The guilt would be too much.

Yep, that's my angle. Utilitarianism is king in epidemiology. We can pretend otherwise, but frequently our hand will be forced anyway.

I don't know if we're going to need to "sacrifice" people who have poly-drug resistant bacteria, but I'm guessing it won't be in our control anyway, if the option is between doing nothing and the patients dying versus doing everything we can and still having the patient die. Damage control is critical, and sentimentality can't get in the way.

FWIW, I wrote an in depth report on controlling poly drug resistant tuberculosis in poor countries when I was in college... the conclusion was that quarantine was not only necessary, it was the only effective course of action for people with full spectrum drug resistant TB. Of course, TB is far more infectious and lethal than garden variety "bacteria".

We had a very nasty experience where my teenage son got a bad eye infection and they had to try about five different antibiotics before falling back on something that is basically a simple antiseptic that eventually fixed the problem.

I think this is going to happen regardless of sentiment. You give people antibiotics, they die. You don't give them antibiotics - they die either way.

The only thing to do is to remove the "apply antibiotics because it looks like we're doing something" and save the antibiotics to use for cases where it will actually work.

But how do you know whether the patient has a resistant infection before giving antibiotics? Are you suggesting every patient is cultured to find out what the underlying infection is before starting treatment?

From recent experience of being hospitalized with pneumonia, they were pumping me full of antibiotics and asking questions later. The culture on my sputum never came back with a clear answer even a couple days later. But they found an antibiotic that worked. I doubt I'll ever know what bacteria ultimately caused the infection. Clearly it was resistant to a few antibiotics that weren't working. Should they instead have left me with a 104 degree fever near death for a few days while trying to figure out if antibiotics would be effective or not, even though the culturing process might not even give a clear answer?

culturing and finding out underlying infection is a great way to ensure that we're actually applying the right medication! Eventually down the line we may have to do just that if we continue to give antibiotics indiscriminately.

It's going to be costly but we're "back-loading" our medical process so that we leave the problem to the next generation of healthcare providers.

It's like we want everything for free - get sick? just give out a ton of medicine! Eventually we have to pay for it.

Then we need a faster and more accurate culturing process. At least from my experience it was neither of those things, and it's hard to say we should leave someone with a potentially deadly infection to lay around for a couple days while trying to figure out what bacteria is infecting them.

I agree with you. I can't imagine anyone sacrificing their child so antibiotics would still work. I'd murder the universe to keep my family safe.