Antibiotics and vaccinations made us complacent about infectious disease. We’ve wasted antibiotics raising…

Antibiotics and vaccinations made us complacent about infectious disease. We’ve wasted antibiotics raising animals, and on human infections that were easily preventable with basic sanitation. Here’s a counterfactual, how the last century could have been so different. /1 https://t.co/b1iUgpSYZn

If we’d avoided antibiotic use for fattening animals, and avoided many of the human infections that we use antibiotics to treat using basic public health measures, humans could have occasionally taken a broad-spectrum antibiotic to address any hidden infections. /2

I’d bet that one shift would have prevented an extraordinary amount of chronic disease. Rather than freely allowing infection and then vastly over-using antibiotics, we could have used them prophylactically. The paradigms of disease in the 20th century were flailing. /3

Endless and inconclusive debates about nutrition, and little efficacy from billions invested in research on genetic causation. Thinking about the body like it’s a physical and chemical machine, rather than an organism. Bodies are societies of microbes. All life is. /4

Infection was always going to be the key to understanding health. Mostly by using simple measures to avoid it. Instead we used vaccines and antibiotics to encourage a reckless orgy of constant infection. /end