From science fiction to zombies to rather realistic scenarios, we've got movies galore saying yes, contagious outbreaks are bad and airborne outbreaks are really bad (this is all true by the way). Yet even with that backdrop, the title of a Medical Daily article wonders aloud: "Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria From American Cattle Become Airborne, But Is It Life-Threatening?"
Now, I normally try to be pretty nonjudgmental about most everything and to be fair the article itself is accurate and well written. That said, headlines change the way we think and how we read articles. When things are literally "if you get this, you or your family can die," I feel like genuine bluntness is called for. Antibiotic resistance jumps between bacteria and it's when they "learn" to be resistant to many antibiotics that you end up in the "untreatable" category. There's no faster way to get around than by air so yes people, airborne antibiotic resistance is absolutely life-threatening. I just don't understand why there's any doubt here...
As the authors of the study conclude, “there is significant potential for widespread distribution of antibiotics, bacteria, and genetic material that encodes antibiotic resistance via airborne PM [particulate matter = stuff blown by the wind]." And "feedlot-derived microbes, including those possessing antibiotic resistance, can be transported to new locations where they may occupy new niches" like maybe in you or your family.
According to the CDC (watch the video), 2 million people get antibiotic resistant infections per year and 23,000 of them die; that's really a whole bunch of people... For comparison, there were 32,719 deaths from car accidents in 2013 and that number has been going down for years. Antibiotic resistant infection deaths? They're predicted to rise to 10 million deaths per year at a cost of $100 trillion by 2050. $100 trillion???
Surely there's a gazillion ways people come to believe what they do and those beliefs are formed from good information, bad information, garbled unintelligible information, everything... That's a big reason for doing this website: to bring people good, reliable, understandable information that you can act on, usually with a bunch of links and references. I suggest that anyone putting stuff out there must be really careful to not incite doubt especially with such serious (not to mention extremely straight forward) issues. You've my word I'll give you the best information I've got in everything here.
So just to be clear, airborne antibiotic resistance is absolutely life-threatening. If it doesn't hit us today, it unfortunately will tomorrow and that applies as much to people as it does to cattle.