How is the use of antibiotics in society contributing problems in daycare centers and hospitals?

Answer 1

This is one of those "Every silver lining has a dark cloud" kind of answers. Antibiotics attack and destroy strains of bacteria that are of course susceptible to them, so that that particular strain may actually be extincted. This if course leaves variants of the strain that are resistant to a given antibiotic and, with all the competition out of the way, that resistant strain flourishes. Maybe another antibiotic will kill that strain; maybe none will (until we invent antibiotics that work in a completely different way). Hospitals in particular, and day care centers to a lesser extent are places where people go when they're sick (you're not supposed to take your kid with the sniffles in to a day care center, but you have to get to work and what else can you do and....). Simple statistics tell us that, among all the sick people at these places, the odds are better than the are at Disneyland (where, if you don't feel good, you often don't go), to encounter a strain of infection that is both contagious and resistant. Of patients spending 2-3 days in a hospital, 8% come home with a disease they contracted in the hospital. The Wall Stree Journal says the amount is as much as 13%+. That's a lot. Hospitals and doctors have responded by encouraging mostly well patients to relocate to a less dangerous milieu. Daycare centers also are cracking down on not allowing sick kids to be dropped off. Finally, and to me most interesting, it's becoming socially more and more rude to appear at work or in a social gathering with a cold! Used to be, one didn't mention these things; not that silence happens less and less.