To be clear, I don’t think the claim that self-medicated antibiotic use causes more antibiotic resistance is obvious bullshit. Maybe the effect size is close to zero outside of hospitals, maybe it’s not, but the claim isn’t obvious bullshit either way.
The “obvious bullshit” part is the (implicit) claim that the cost outweighs the benefit, or is even remotely on the same order of magnitude, especially when we’re talking about an area where the alternative is usually “don’t use antibiotics at all”.
Yeah, it seems in the neighborhood of worrying that giving parachutes to people being pushed out of planes might lead to manufacture of low-quality parachutes to meet the demand, resulting in a net increase in deaths from plummeting to the ground.
To be clear, I don’t think the claim that self-medicated antibiotic use causes more antibiotic resistance is obvious bullshit. Maybe the effect size is close to zero outside of hospitals, maybe it’s not, but the claim isn’t obvious bullshit either way.
The “obvious bullshit” part is the (implicit) claim that the cost outweighs the benefit, or is even remotely on the same order of magnitude, especially when we’re talking about an area where the alternative is usually “don’t use antibiotics at all”.
Yeah, it seems in the neighborhood of worrying that giving parachutes to people being pushed out of planes might lead to manufacture of low-quality parachutes to meet the demand, resulting in a net increase in deaths from plummeting to the ground.