Those examples both qualify as necessary and emergent.

What's been happening for decades is things like kids getting a cold and doctors wanting to appease panicked parents by prescribing an antibiotic (that's obviously going to do nothing to a virus).

I'm not sure how prevalent your example is these days.

I have plenty of recent experience bringing kids to pediatricians, and they do not hand out antibiotics like popcorn.

They do lots of rapid in-office tests that detect strep, flu, swine flu, fungus etc. within minutes - so the diagnoses are much more accurate than in the past.

Doctors are getting better about it because of better awareness of the problem. My kids' pediatrician is similarly good about it.

Last year NY state started putting out "when does my child need antibiotics?" pamphlets that they have in the exam rooms.

Exactly. And not even for more severe colds either, like when having fever or a red throat, but rather for freaking runny noses.

What I'm saying is that we should have treated antibiotics, as a worldwide community, like a stockpile with a finite lifespan and only a limited availability. As few uses as possible, with the goal of saving lives, not making people "feel better".

What I'm imagining is something like the Department of Energy, or even the CDC here, regulating the ability to prescribe antibiotics and establishing rules that must be followed for their use. Antibiotics would not be a privately exchanged commodity, but a highly regulated resource managed for the public good.

So, would this hypothetical future involve antibiotics for your hypothetical cases? Probably? Possibly? If doctors discerned that the cause of the swelling was bacterial infection, if the bladder infection was threatening to the wife's future well-being? Then I'd suppose so.

But you wouldn't get antibiotics just for being alive like you do now. They practically hand them out like candy at doctor's offices.

Oh, you have a cough? Have a z-pak. Doesn't matter if it's a viral infection going around, who cares if giving you this drug just ensures that some day in the future we won't be able to treat someone who is actually dying with azithromycin. What's important is that taking these pills will make you feel like we're doing something to help.

Maybe GP didn't have the best wording, but I would classify those both as emergencies appropriate for antibiotic use -- you may only think them not because antibiotics are seen as so commonplace.

Non-emergencies:

* sore throat * lots of chickens packed in one place

How about the animals and hand-soap aficionados? Perhaps they could hold off for a bit?