Not so fast, those bacteria have a way of mutating to beat antibiotics. This war has lead to strains that are harder to treat, and there's no sign of this stopping.
* Assuming you were 100% correct, that means it's a rate problem. Assume it takes time X for bacteria to evolve resistance and it takes time Y for us to develop each new antibiotic. As of now, X << Y, but Y is falling. Once Y < X we are developing new antibiotics faster than resistance is evolving, it's basically a solved problem.
* Fitness is not a 1-D line. Every time a bacteria evolves resistance, it pays a cost for doing so (in lab experiments it's pretty easy to generate resistance by adding antibiotics, and the resistance factors disappear very quickly once the antibiotic is removed, suggesting a fitness cost). So even while they're getting harder to treat they're also getting less robust in general.
I never thought about it this way but this is really insightful. I was assuming it will be an endless war but if the cost gets prohibitively high to maintain resistance we have a real advantage
Because if we have those tools we can always easily find new sites to attack. Molecular/nanoscale tools that can target specific cells would solve most of our illnesses, bacteria or no.
It may come as a surprise then that we already use molecular tools to fight bacteria.
That's what antibiotics are - fairly small, relatively simple molecules.
The problem with bacteria is they are a moving target - it's not as if they aren't constantly under attack from all sides already.
Bacteriophage ( viruses that target bacteria ) are ubiquitous, there is bacteria on bacteria action ( in fact most current antibiotics are molecules one bacteria or fungi developed to kill another ), and organisms like us - are constantly trying to kill bacteria through multiple mechanisms.
phages are one answer. Basically bacteria hitmen. Last I knew they are ok to protect your lunch meat but not for things you'd think they'd be frontrunners for like mersa
