Young people who only years before would have beaten these infections were now dying, and this calamity triggered a rapid search for new antibiotics, and many new classes were introduced in the 1960s and '70s. These have by and large been effective for the past 30 years. Unseen and unnoticed, however, bacteria have been slowly building up a resistance to all our new antibiotics, to the point where we are now seeing bacterial infections that refuse to go away, despite an arsenal of potent antibiotics at our disposal. Medical practitioners are now entering a phase in which the drugs that they once relied upon may no longer be as effective - and have no effect at all in some cases. Despite this, antibiotics are used extensively and often, both in the community and in hospitals - even though we're aware that in many cases, they make little difference or have no effect.
Antibiotics kill bacteria, but are completely harmless to viruses.
Nevertheless, people with viral infections often demand antibiotics, because they want a quick cure. A lot of doctors go along with this, not because they think it will help, but because of an ingrained expectation in the community to be prescribed 'something'. In reality, the best treatment is to allow a few days for the body's immune system to overcome the infection on its own. And while we might accept it if we knew antibiotics were only being used to cure people, the truth is that most antibiotic use is wasted. In fact, most of it is not even used on humans.