I agree that it's a bigger problem, but I believe this will make it significantly worse.
Right now, you have to go to a doctor and get a prescription - if you don't have a bacterial infection, or aren't likely to get one (e.g., post-oral-surgery stuff) they won't prescribe you the antibiotics.
If it's possible to buy it on amazon, people will end up 'abusing' them to try and treat non-bacterial infections.
Doctors throw antibiotics at viral infections as a placebo cure _all_ the time. Neither that activity nor these Amazon resellers make a dent in antibiotic use when compared to factory farms and traditional cattle operations. Like it or not, antibiotics are a staple in the diets of a large majority of this country's mammalian population
> Doctors throw antibiotics at viral infections as a placebo cure
That's actually not what doctors say. When they can't determine if an infection is viral or bacterial, they treat it on the chance that it's bacterial (since we have a known treatment for bacterial infections and don't usually have a treatment for viral infections).
Tonsillitis is a good example: About 50% of tonsillitis cases are viral and 50% bacterial. "Relying on clinical presentation and history alone is unreliable in differentiating streptococcal from viral tonsillitis."[1] And bacterial tonsillitis can be quite serious.
So it seems reasonable to go ahead and treat with antibiotics even when there's a 50% chance that it's wasted, because the other 50% chance was that the treatment was highly beneficial.
> Doctors throw antibiotics at viral infections as a placebo cure _all_ the time.
A fact pulled directly from your ass. Doctors never prescribe antibiotics for viral infections; antibiotics are for bacterial infections and no they don't just hand them out willy nilly.
Yes, but for placebos they proscribe low-level, relatively harmless antibiotics instead of nuclear-level drugs like clindamycin that decimate your internal flora and leave you with galloping diarrhea that can kill you.
Right now, you have to go to a doctor and get a prescription - if you don't have a bacterial infection, or aren't likely to get one (e.g., post-oral-surgery stuff) they won't prescribe you the antibiotics.
If it's possible to buy it on amazon, people will end up 'abusing' them to try and treat non-bacterial infections.