People use antibiotics to treat things that are not helped by antibiotics.
Antibiotics were routinely used for ear infection even though there's no evidence of benefit. Antibiotics were routinely used for viral illness where there's no possibility of benefit, and possibility of harm.
Obviously unnecessary use of antibiotics is unnecessary (a fact I alluded to), but that's not what I was responding to. You're putting words in my mouth there. I said the call for "emergencies only!" antibiotics was overkill. If I took your point differently than you intended, maybe you would like to rephrase.
Antibiotics were routinely used for ear infection even though there's no evidence of benefit. Antibiotics were routinely used for viral illness where there's no possibility of benefit, and possibility of harm.
(http://www.cdc.gov/std/Gonorrhea/STDFact-gonorrhea.htm)
> Untreated gonorrhea can cause serious and permanent health problems in both women and men.
That seems like a reasonable use of an antibiotic. But maybe we should have been working out how to get people to use condoms.