Quarantine may be an effective tactic for some of the more virulent outbreaks, but it won&#x27;t prevent antibiotic resistance.<p>Tuberculosis is a prime example of why this is such an intractable problem. 1 in 3 people globally are infected with the TB bacterium. That&#x27;s &gt;2 billion people!<p>It is usually dormant, but there&#x27;s a 10% chance it will flare up into the active - and deadly - state in a healthy individual&#x27;s lifetime, so it really needs to be treated. It is the top infectious disease killer every year (&gt;1.5 million people, including 140,000 children).<p>The current treatment regime requires daily doses of multiple kinds of antibiotics for 9 months, and that assumes you&#x27;re lucky enough to have a strain that is vulnerable to first line drugs. In practice many treatment regimes require multiple antibiotics administered at once, and can take up to 24 months to clear from the body. Second line drugs have severe side effects.<p>Every time someone misses a dose, they risk creating a resistant strain. In fact, even if you&#x27;re taking it regularly, there&#x27;s a chance it will still develop into a resistant strain.<p>There is simply no way to ensure all of the 2 billion infected people around the world, mostly in low and middle income countries, will (1) be identified, (2) have access to these drugs, (3) consistently take them for 9-24 months even if faced with severe side effects, and (4) be monitored by a professional that can decide when to move to a second or third round of treatment.<p>A certain percentage of the population will never be treated, abandon treatment too early, or simply have terrible luck and not fully respond to treatment. You just can&#x27;t identify and quarantine them all. Besides, even if you did, where would you house them? For how long, the 24 months of treatment? The rest of their lives?<p>It&#x27;s also important to remember the human element here. We can&#x27;t cycle&#x2F;phase out antibiotics, even if you did manage to get every doctor in all 190+ countries of the world to agree to do so. What would you do if you or your baby needed treatment, but a doctor told you &quot;no, we won&#x27;t prescribe the most effective treatment because we&#x27;re worried in 30 years it won&#x27;t be effective anymore.&quot; Without effective treatment, an active case of TB has a 45% chance to lead to death. It&#x27;s also in everyone&#x27;s interest that that infected person be cured asap.<p>Finally, it&#x27;s highly doubtful draconian containment or drug cycling restrictions would even work. Drug resistant genes are already in the natural environment. Life finds a way. In 2012, doctors found a strain of TB in India that is entirely resistant to =all= known treatment. They found 12 cases in one hospital alone. Most facilities don&#x27;t know how to identify it, so it&#x27;s spreading out there, right now.<p>Quarantine and treatment can slow the progression of resistance, but it simply can&#x27;t be reversed. 3.5% of new cases every year are already resistant to =multiple= drugs. We will need to develop an entirely new model over the next century to eliminate these bacterial infections.