Get antibiotics for that cold

What actually happened

The prescribing culture was extraordinary. Antibiotics were treated as a general-purpose remedy for feeling ill, patients expected a prescription as proof of a worthwhile visit, and doctors wrote them to satisfy that expectation and end the appointment. The CDC's national campaign to change this began in 1995 and formalized around 1998, with the WHO and national health services following.

The consequence is the reason this entry matters more than most. Bacteria evolve under selection, and every unnecessary course selects for resistance. The 2022 Lancet Global Research on Antimicrobial Resistance study estimated 1.27 million deaths directly attributable to resistant bacterial infections in 2019, with 4.95 million associated. The WHO lists antimicrobial resistance among the top global public health threats, and the pipeline of new antibiotics is thin because they are commercially unattractive to develop.

The related classroom rule, always finish the course, has itself been questioned since a 2017 BMJ analysis argued the evidence for it is weak and that longer courses can drive resistance. That is a live debate and current advice is still to follow your prescriber, so this is not a case where you should overrule your doctor from a webpage. But "antibiotics for a cold" was never right, and it was standard practice for decades.