Influenza is the same every year. The influenza virus changes every year. Sometimes new strains come along and affect even the healthy. During these years, even healthy people are very sick. These diagnoses lead to treating patients with antibiotics.
Inaccurate diagnosis is the most common reason for overuse of antibiotics and the harm that results.
There is no way for doctors to diagnose influenza for sure. There is no treatment for influenza except rest, Tylenol and chicken soup. There are also two older drugs, amantadine and rimantadine, that are pills. These older drugs have not been widely used because doctors hesitate to treat without a definitive diagnosis of influenza. In addition, there has been evidence of the emergence of antiviral drug-resistant viruses.