Persistent Symptoms and Associated Risk Factors of COVID-19: A Cross-Sectional Study in Minia, Upper Egypt, 2025, Bassem et al.

Why would you even take an antibiotic for a viral infection?

 

Antibiotics are routinely handed out to people who have a viral infection presumably due a whole range of different reasons (a viral infection being misrecognised as bacterial infection, doctors generally overprescribing antibiotics due to different reasons, doctors wanting to please patients asking for antibiotics, which in this case are even available over-the-counter so doctors might think that them prescribing them might migitiaet some risks of over-the-counter use, doctors not knowing what to do in a given situation and wanting to give antibiotics a try etc). The study mentions doctors prescribing antibiotics for colds etc. The authors note that self-mediation with antibiotics is common in the region presumably due to a combiniation of the above with over-the-counter access.

I have only taken antibiotics once and that was after a doctor prescribed them to me because the doctor thought I had a bacterial infection which actually turned out to be a viral infection. I know of other people who are routinely prescribed antibiotics as soon as they visit a doctor. In the case of Covid there were a few studies looking at antibiotic use for acute Covid which might have added to an overprescription (There's plenty of cases of people being prescribed antibiotics for Covid).

 

This has happened to me too. My GP was away for some reason and another GP stood in for him. I went there with some throat infection that kept recurring over several weeks. She prescribed me antibiotics. I went back later because my symptoms came back again afterwards and my GP told me this was surely viral not bacterial. So I guess this is probably not even that uncommon.

 

When no help is available, people will turn to anything. This in itself makes the case that medicine should not be in the business of denying illnesses, it just forces people to do things that will harm them. And yet here we are. I suspect it's so much worse than this, but it's not as if the mind-body stuff is any less BS.

Then again about 20 years ago I had a pretty bad case of bronchitis, which is usually viral, and a physician gave me antibiotics. I also had an allergic reaction to it. Which was fun! So it wouldn't surprise me if in poorer countries this sort of thing happened a lot, where the "good old days" of physicians having a hunch and trying stuff with patients who come their way are still going strong.