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by majewsky 2495 days ago
The dichotomy is wrong. If you allow people to have antibiotics at home, enough of them are gonna chew them like vitamins to spread antibiotics resistance even faster. Then when you have your emergency, sure you can eat your pills, but it's not gonna do shit.

The only remotely viable solution is improving access to ERs.

2 comments

What about an alternative where any usages have to be reported and measured and incorrect usage has an increasing penalty. It starts small and only ramps up with repeated abuse.

If you don't consent to the rules, that is fine, you aren't allowed the drugs at home (same as today).

That is impossible to enforce.

Like the parent said, lots of people will pop those things like candy. In very short order they won’t work at all.

> The only remotely viable solution is improving access to ERs.

Telemedicine plus improving 24-hour pharmacy distribution and equipping them for rapid door-to-door delivery of critical meds (possibly by drone) might work, and might soon be more viable than ERs for the particular use case.

ER access addresses a lot more problems and probably wins aggregate cost/benefit analysis for the foreseeable future.