This old wives' tale, if I can call it that, has been somewhat demystified in the last year—the idea that when you get an antibiotic course, you have to finish it. You have to take the whole course. We now know there is no evidence for that, and people are encouraging shorter-course regimens, as Dr. Shevchuk was saying. If it is not an infection due to bacteria, we are encouraging patients to stop the antibiotic, because so many antibiotics are given for viral infections. Patients get the antibiotic when they have a virus; then they get better and they think the antibiotic made them better. In fact, there is no causal link between the antibiotic and the fact that they got better, in the case of a virus. Aborting a course of antibiotics is appropriate. There is no need to finish it off.
I still think the whole issue of prescribing antibiotics at the outset is the big question. How do we cut that down? I think we need new diagnostic strategies or clinical scores. We can't get this to zero. This is not the opioid crisis, where we're aiming for zero. We're trying to get it lower and lower, but it's not like a marketing exercise in which next year we're going to drop it by another 10% and ultimately get to zero. The floor is the ceiling at some point.