[Aachen]

> about 7 out of 10 people in the U.S. were prescribed antibiotics in 2024 according to <CDC data>.

This blew my mind so I double checked the source. It links to https://www.cdc.gov/antibiotic-use/hcp/data-research/antibio... which contains some numbers but not the claim. It links to various reports, the latest one (2024 at the time of writing) https://www.cdc.gov/antibiotic-use/media/pdfs/2024-Annual-Re... says at the top of page 2 that the prescription rate is 679 and 775 doses per 1000 people in 2024, depending on the gender. That matches the 7-in-10 number so I'm guessing this is where the statistic comes from

Doesn't that reflect how many prescriptions there were rather than what number of people got it prescribed? See also page 3 where Mississippi has 1167 doses per 1000 persons. Either the number of people is wrong (if the prescription given to a tourist and counted towards this statistic, the tourist should also be counted as person, but the CDC says they take the population count from a census) or it's about doses and not about what part of the population got an antibiotic in the last year. In both of these cases, you can't conclude 116.7% of people got antibiotics prescribed. The claim in the article based on that CDC data sounds to me like saying 520% of the people drink alcohol when, in reality, 10% drinks a bottle a week and the rest nil

I'm probably misunderstanding the CDC report but I'm not sure how I should be able to tell that

[lithocarpus]

There's no way 7 in 10 people were prescribed antibiotics in 2024. This looks like a simple and egregious misinterpretation of the data, which seem to be all too common. I could believe there were 700 prescriptions given in the US per 1000 people in the US population. But many of those would be repeats to the same smaller number of people. I still would say there's way too much antiobiotic use - every time doctors have wanted to give me antiobiotics it wasn't necessary.

[tcmart14]

My wife isn't with me to answer directly, so I am going off memory. She is a nurse. But I am pretty she when telling me about her day at the hospital she also mentions needing to change antibiotic for patients for various reasons. I am guessing that also counts as 1 person, multiple antibiotics. Probably considered "separate" prescriptions.

[horsawlarway]

This would be my read.

Hell - my children just this year would have counted for 10+ doses (my daughter 6 all by herself for a series of severe ear infections).

[tcmart14]

Yea that's another good point. Luckily my kids haven't had troubles with ear infections, but my sister did growing up. It like 3 or 4 times a year almost every year in elementary school and halfway through middle school that she had multiple that she needed to go antibiotics.

[micr0bi0l0gist]

Author of the article here, thank you for pointing this out out! I added the following correction to my article: "Killing bacteria thus became a major preoccupation of modern life. Its most visible manifestation today might be taking antibiotics (first available in the 1940s): there were ~700 antibiotic prescriptions per 1000 people<4> in 2024 according to CDC data. A close second might be the dizzying array of disinfectant products found in U.S. grocery stores." I added this footnote as well: "<4> Author correction 7/28/26: I reported this initially as “7 in 10 people were prescribed antibiotics,” but a commenter on another site pointed out that the original report data likely reflects a smaller number of people getting repeat prescriptions, so I have reported the raw data from the CDC report instead."

[jacobolus]

Yes, it's "number of prescriptions" (but not "number of people prescribed" or "number of doses"). One person could be prescribed an antibiotic (or multiple) several times a year.

I'm amazed that there are 1216 antibiotic prescriptions per 1000 people per year in West Virginia though (2.5x the rate of California or Colorado, which itself frankly seems pretty high). Are large parts of the South just awash with bacterial infections, are people being prescribed antibiotics for viral illnesses, or are they just taking antibiotics prophylactically?

[doublepg23]

> antibiotics prophylactically

Ticks are pretty bad nearby in WPA, I've taken antibiotics prophylactically for them.

[NDlurker]

What about ivermectin? I've taken ivermectin prophylactically when traveling because I'm afraid of bed bugs. Pretty sure you can do the same with ticks. Just stop by your local farm supply store and pick up some of that nasty apple flavored horse paste. Just make sure you dose it right. Easy to do. Absolutely disgusting.

[zdragnar]

Depends on where you are- in most of the US, tick concerns are primarily Lyme's disease or Rocky mountain fever, which are a virus and bacterium. Ivermectin works by interfering with nerve and tissues of invertebrate parasites, and generally isn't useful for bacteria or viruses.

[doublepg23]

Correct, I would take doxycycline if I found numerous ticks on me- especially if they were embedded.

[10u152]

No, but I believe the idea is to damage the ticks before the exposure to the bacteria/viruses and thus minimise/prevent it.

[Eisenstein]

Doxycycline is also a prescribed for acne, so there are a lot of teenagers getting 12 prescriptions every year.

[smallerize]

Wait is that individual doses? Like one prescription would commonly be for 20-30 doses.

[Aachen]

Can't imagine; then the figure should be much higher. If the source had agreed with the claim, I wouldn't have trouble believing 7 in 10 people in the USA get told to take at least one set of antibiotics a year (ageing population, it's prescribed almost as frequently as water and rest.. one can rationalise it together), but conversely a 25th of 70% would be ~3% which seems on the low side again. I got it prescribed way more than 3% of the years I've been alive and I'm not yet middle aged

It's probably just as the CDC document says: number of prescriptions. If you are told to take it for 3 weeks thrice a day and later in the year a second time, that's two prescriptions (per my non-native understanding of English medical terms anyway)

[NDlurker]

I had 2 or 3 rounds of antibiotics and steroids in 2025 for a stubborn ear infection.

[quickthrowman]

I just finished my second course of antibiotics to treat an ear infection that wasn’t resolved after the first round and I also had a course of antibiotics earlier in the year to treat an infection on my thumb joint on the pad side that caused the worst pain I’ve ever felt.

Three antibiotic prescriptions this year and it’s not even August yet! It had been a number of years since I had taken antibiotics.

[ChiperSoft]

There was a particularly nasty strain of pneumonia going around in early 2024. That may have played a role.

[WoodenChair]

Yes I stopped reading there after checking the source myself and seeing the same discrepancy. I had also noticed earlier in the article she wrote, "This finding was great news for Napoleon. The French were losing money, and perhaps more alarmingly, their reputation, exporting wine to the British – the wine would “spontaneously” go bad during shipping."

Pasteur was born after Napoleon was exiled. Maybe she is referring to Napoleon III, but then it's misleading to just write "Napoleon." Two factual mistakes in the first couple pages and I can't trust the rest. Especially on a topic I know little about so I can't be discerning regarding.

[micr0bi0l0gist]

Thank you for pointing this out! I added the following correction and footnote to my piece. I tried to be as rigorous as possible but am definitely better-versed in biology than French history. "This finding was great news for Napoleon III<2>. The French were losing money, and perhaps more alarmingly, their reputation, exporting wine to the British – the wine would “spontaneously” go bad during shipping." Footnote: "<2> Author correction 7/28/26: Changed from “Napoleon” to “Napoleon III.” A commenter on another site correctly pointed out that Napoleon I was exiled before Pasteur was born. According to the Pasteur Institute, “in 1863, Napoleon III asked [Pasteur] to study diseases in wine.”"

[Aachen]

There seems to be some original research in the post as well though. I'm not assuming they faked their test results or anything at all. I think the article is worth the read, just yeah this (if the replies and I are not reading it wrong) seems like a strange error to make so maybe the not-really-relevant background facts are just not as rigorous. And to err is human