Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !askusa@discuss.online
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
I'm no medicinologist but, anecdotally, I am convinced that anti biotics help recover from the flu much much faster, and can also help prevent complications.
My home country was pretty lax on drug enforcement, and doctors would prescribe antibiotics if your fever hadn't broken in ~3 days (or sooner if you nagged them enough). Getting started on anti biotics would lead to recovery in a day or two at most.
The govt. bodies are getting stricter now, and it's harder to get antibiotics. Pretty much everyone around me has longer and longer recovery times. In just the last two years, 3 people I know (granted, they're 60-70 year olds) have had to be hospitalized (2 pneumonia, 1 I don't remember) after their condition deteriorated.
I know that's it's widely accepted that antibiotics don't help fight the flu, but it's my pulled-it-out-of-my-ass hypothesis that it does help ward off all the other crap allowing the immune system to fight the viruses more effectively leading to faster recovery.
Also, in my home country we used to get paracetamol/acetaminophen injections when the fever spiked too much. But I'm currently in Canada and the recommended "just eat soup and hydrate" is BS. We're just left to fend for ourselves with no option minimize harm /discomfort/symptoms unless you're on deaths door. I'm guessing that most of the rest of the developed world is like this too?
Sincerely, Suffering from flu
Even if that worked, the problem is that we're already overusing antibiotics and breeding all kind of multiresistant bacteria. We have to use them sparingly or we'll run out of usable antibiotics in the near future.
How much over use of anti biotics (and related issues) is from humans and how much of it is from farming? Is a human taking antibiotics for 3 days a year really the issue when farmers use it like it's straw on a daily basis?
Farming is a factor for sure, but the kind of multiresistant bacteria being bred in farms are usually a bigger issue for the farms than for humans. Zoonotic diseases exist of course, but most of those bacteria do not infect humans and there is much less opportunities for diseases to spread to humans from a farm. Places like hospitals overusing antibiotics are far more dangerous for human health, as all the germs there are human ones and because there are a lot of opportunities for human to human transmission.
But as I said, it's not that we should only reduce antibiotic overuse in humans. Overuse by farms is a massive problem as well. One doesn't exclude the other.