Antibiotic Resistance is Way Worse than You Think...

Uncover the alarming reality of antibiotic resistance and its historical context, from deadly pandemics to the groundbreaking discovery of penicillin. Explore potential solutions, including cutting-edge machine learning, offering hope for a resilient future.

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[jeremywalker]

Crazy to think my great grandmother was born in the old world (pre-penicillin) and has lived long enough to see antibiotic resistance become a growing problem. She’ll be 102 in July

[ffederel]

Last year, I got a bacterial pneumonia. A doctor gave me antibiotics, but the disease didn't fully subside. I then saw a lung doctor who told me "Your doctor was sloppy: for the last 20 years or so, we've treated bacterial pneumonia with combining two antibiotics because it's resistant."

[christopherfeatherley]

I was watching dr. Dray (the Dermatologist) earlier today, and she discussed how one of the most troublesome things she often has to discuss with her patients is to *not* do anything -- and let the body and time recover on its own. The issue is, patients often expect their doctors to prescribe them medication (specifically antibiotics), and will most times be upset if the healthcare provider does not. Antibiotics are a miracle drug, but should only be used when absolutely necessary. Our society is dependent on instant conveniences that we ignore the dangers -- cost -- we ought to pay later on for aforementioned conveniences.

Thank you for making this video. I think it's not something everyone is aware of or is often discussed in schools enough

[RoscoPColetraneIII]

I trained in plastic surgery at Johns Hopkins (the Johns Hopkins/University of Maryland Shock Trauma Program). We had a patient in the ICU. He was a soldier from deployment in Iraq. He had Acinetobacter spores on him, from the desert sands. The spores germinated into bacteria and became pan-resistant to all antibiotics, including Colistin. When Colistin won’t kill something, that is the definition of being f*ck3d. The patients on each side of his ICU room contracted the same Acinetobacter infection. All three died. Before they died we sealed off the ICU and moved all other patients somewhere else.
When it came to decontaminating the ICU, it took the applied physics department at Hopkins to literally create a robotic machine for the purpose. It sprayed an unbelievable dangerous peroxide on everything in the entire unit for over 24 hours. The cost of the decontamination alone was over $50 million. It worked.
It took the best of everyone—infectious disease, intensivists, epidemiologists, applied physicists, and more—to put their heads together at one of the greatest hospitals in the world to come up with this plan. There are only a few other hospitals capable of this expert mobilization. They pulled it off, but barely. I cannot put into words how close we came to not successfully decontaminating that unit without the Acinetobacter getting out of the unit. How it never got out of the unit I don’t know. It never showed up again in any patient.
But, I guarantee you it did get out on nurses and doctors, therapists and anyone else near. They were healthy. So they didn’t get sick. But it’s still out there. Those spores will never die in the world environment.
Most people will simply never understand how insanely scary this is. It will happen again, and it will eventually not be contained.

[jennifergridley]

My mom contracted MRSA while in the hospital. Unfortunately it was in her respiratory system. She was already fighting severe diverticulitis that had required 2 surgeries and the infection had become systemic. She had to be in the dark in ICU because of the drugs being used intravenously. We all had to wear masks with face shields, gowns, booties, gloves... it's a terrible, horrible thing and after 7 1/2 weeks of fighting, she passed away. Please be really careful. ❤

[spamuel]

Another factor to bacteriophages that I'm pretty sure he missed is that 'phage resistant bacteria end up losing some of their antibiotic resistance in the process of developing resistance to the bacteriophage, so treatment could be as simple as pairing a bacteriophage with an accompanying antibiotic.

[dannnmerkle]

If it wasn't for penicillin I might have never been born. My grandpa was in the pacific theatre WW2 and got pinned down in shallow water behind rocks n coral on a kinda failed beach landing. A Japanese sniper bounced a bullet/shrapnel off a rock behind him and hit him in the leg, he was prone and bled into the salt water for hours before help got there. When he got to the doctors they were like, hey it looks pretty bad but we have this new experimental stuff called penicillin, its been working really good, wanna try it?

[DomyTheMad]

thank you for making me realize that:
- i go through semi-regular (medically called for) antibiotic rounds.
- the last 2 times my gut/intestines seemed to recover remarkably well compared to the fi... oh no

good news: the good bacteria in my gut are now more resistant to antibiotics
bad news: they might teach their cousins the ropes..

[Tea_laBlue]

I remember during my 16th birthday, I had turned out to be a staph infection on my legs. I went to a clinic and they gave me a script for penicillin, but my mom wisked me back home to see my primary, and they gave me a different antibiotic and tested some of the sores. Two weeks into a four week treatment, they told me that I was resistant to that antibiotic (which was crazy because the sores had been going away)

I got it from a beach. There had been a high bacterial levels, and we didn’t know about it until after I had gone swimming with scratched open bug bites.

[gordonlumbert]

I remember back in the 80s part of the problem was identified as being people given antibiotics when they didn't need them. Another problem was people not finishing their course of antibiotics therefore they were not killing them all and creating resistant bacteria. (many member of my extended family worked in medicine)

[jkee]

My friend does this research as virologist. And his conclusion is that its going to come from either india or china, areas who dump massive ammounts of antibiotics in their population but the hygene standards are still so subpar that its creating more resistant diseases

[pixiesouter]

I just paused this video because, even though I've heard the phrase a million times, I was curious about the story that birthed the expression "sword of Damocles". So for anyone else curious:

Dionysius, king of Syracuse (in Sicily) was always worried. He had the finest foods, sweetest wines and most gorgeous women at his disposal but he seemed disinterested in all his finery. One day, his closest friend, Damocles, mocks the king for his constant sulking. So, annoyed, the king suggests that they swap places for a day, but while sitting in the throne Damocles was not allowed to get up and a sword would be hung above his head on a horsehair thread. He has his day as king but has little interest in all the finery he now has access to and is simply consumed with anxiety over the sword. When Dionysius returned the next morning Damocles practically threw the crown back at him and the king explained "when a king is crowned an invisible sword is hung above his head. Pirates, thieves, plotters and revolutionaries would cut the thread to steal the crown, hanging their own sword in the process" Damocles never mocked his friend nor wished for his crown ever again.
So now I finally understand, a "sword of Damocles" is the foreboding of an imposing event, imagined or real.

[ElessarEstel]

This is why I don't take antibiotics unless I have a serious infection that won't end up going away on its own. I've only taken them twice and both times were due to severe wounds

[morsumbra]

Whats crazy to me is here in the US we STILL give amtibiotics to combat teen acne. I got monocycline for couple years for acne from 2009-2011 when i was in high school.

Turned out im fructose and lactose intolerant and within a month of cutting all that out of my foods, my skin cleared up. My IBS symptoms went away. I stopped getting migraines. I slept WAY better.

This experience of every doctor telling me medical problems(IBS, acne, migraines) and advanced ways to treat it. When it was actually just my diet and exercise. Made me become an exercise scientist and now medical researcher. I hate the voodoo marketing BS around food but we really are what we eat and so many doctors, even GI doctors, look at it from a textbook manner vs a holistic manner.

And i get why. the system incentives are to move quick, prescribe and then access. The system and patient both want quick results and being mindful of foods(something most people interact with 3-5 times a day) can be tedious and puts a lot of the Onus on the patient being diligent and doctor educating vs doctor fixing everything.

[CruelViper]

I know here in the Netherlands: The use of antibiotics is only used as a last resource.
Our own bodies can do a lot by it self if you provide the right nutrients, or assist with common medications.
Assisting certain ailments, so the body can focus on what maters.

[YoungGandalf]

A little off topic, but Simon reminds me of a Bond villain sitting in that chair. All he needs is a fluffy white cat on his lap.

[itsmeblank]

The thing about bacteriophage that makes me feel confident about them is that unlike stagnant antibiotics is that phages are arguably alive as such they are under the same biological rules that got us into antibacterial resistance bacteria - biological armrace. In essence, the as the bacteria adapts to the phages resistance the phages adapt more strategies to infect them

[schniekeschnalle]

I'm allergic to penicillin and derivatives, so I've always tried to avoid antibiotics if possible since I already have so few to choose from. I also have to second-guess my physician every time. When I tell them I'm allergic to penicillin they always think, I might get some pimples. No bruh, I can die from that, I'm not being unnecessarily complicated.

[EmeraldEyesEsoteric]

I took antibiotics for years to deal with tooth infections rather then getting the teeth removed. I knew there was a risk of developing bacteria that would be immune to them. What I didn't know was that I could become allergic to Amoxicillin. No one told me that. Now I can't take any without breaking out into hives and nearly passing out.

[MDAdams]

I shattered both legs in 2001. A resistant staff was introduced into my bone marrow during the surgeries to repair them. The damage from the wreck was horrific the damage from the lack of cleanliness in the operating room was DEVASTATING