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by eschaton 1273 days ago
Why were doctors prescribing antibiotics for COVID?!
5 comments
eftychis 1273 days ago
Death from COVID, and other pneumonic (pulmonary) diseases, can be commonly a result of secondary infection by bacteria. Our bodies are not the best at handling two different types of threats at the same time. See https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-92220-0 for instance.

P.S. Note that the situation was unclear in 2020-2021 -- for instance from a quick lookup see https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34354682/. So patient management was different per region -- as it was a guess.

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AustinDev 1273 days ago
Secondary infections of bacterial pneumonia were common with COVID iirc.
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dopylitty 1273 days ago
A study just came out showing that co-infections weren't common [0]

0: https://academic.oup.com/ofid/article/9/Supplement_2/ofac492...

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anbende 1273 days ago
When I was in Peru, they kind of prescribed antibiotics for everything. Persistent cold? Antibiotics. Like that.

Source: lived there with Peruvian partner for 18 months.

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getoj 1273 days ago
Same deal in Japan, every time my kid has a cold her mum takes her to the doctor and comes home with antibiotics. When I get a cold the first thing anyone asks is whether I went to the doctor yet. For what? “Medicine.”
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friendlyHornet 1273 days ago
I'm Jordanian and it's the same in Jordan; it feels like people take antibiotics like candy in Jordan
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lucb1e 1273 days ago
Germany/Netherlands also from my limited experience.
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xvilka 1273 days ago
Some of the antibiotics have also proven antiviral and/or immunomodulatory effect, e.g. azithromycin [1] or levofloxacin [2].

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34015317/

[2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32546446/

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pram 1273 days ago
I think some of those 'kits' countries were distributing to people early-on (before the vaccine) contained stuff like doxycycline.
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