Original article: https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/ANNALS-25-02404

FTA: The misuse of antibiotics was a big reason for the rise — unfinished or unnecessary prescriptions that didn’t kill the germs made them stronger.

Not my field, but IIRC this is misleading: When an unfinished or unnecessary antibiotic doesn't kill all the germs, an unintended consequence is that the antibiotic "clears the field" for the surviving (and, ipso facto, more-survivable) germs to reproduce and spread — thus strengthening the remaining germ population.

Recently lost an old friend of mine to this. Healthy, early 30s. Every day they were posting selfies from a hospital bed, I reached out thinking they had cancer or something... they looked as bad as a living person can. No hyperbole I remember seeing my great grandma in the nursing home as a young kid and she looked better than this. They said it was just some bacterial thing but nothing was working.

Realized it had been weeks since I've heard from them, phone number was disconnected, had to log in to facebook to confirm the worst. RIP