Low-income kids, who don't go to doctors that often, are less likely to have resistant pneumococci . When people with an upper respiratory infection go to the doctor, they often expect to walk out of the office with an antibiotic. All antibiotics do is help bacteria become resistant to them. But for most normal healthy adults and children, antibiotics are vastly overused. Many of those infections are caused by viruses, and won't be helped by antibiotics.
Doctors feel pressure because they're afraid they'll lose their patients.
There's a sense that if I don't walk out of the office with a prescription, I got shortchanged. That mindset has got to change. The most important message for consumers is to be aware that most of the time you see a doctor for an upper respiratory infection like a cold or sore throat, you don't need an antibiotic. And in those circumstances, you shouldn't take it. But in most cases they would also have gotten better without them.