I haven’t seen much discussion about any negative consequences of the more thorough cleaning procedures in place everywhere due to COVID. There are also secondary infections in COVID patients.
Are we going to create more resistant viruses or antibiotic resistant bacteria?
As far as antibiotics (presumably used appropriately to treat secondary infections) leading to more resistance: well, yeah - that’s pretty widely accepted.
I read somewhere, sometime, that the harsher disinfectants - the sort you can’t take internally, like bleach and Lysol - damage the microbes in such a way that resistance can’t really happen. As in, you’re destroying their cell membranes or viral coats or whatever. But I didn’t recall where, so I went googling for a cite.
Conflicting reports on hand sanitizers:
Some Bacteria Are Becoming 'More Tolerant' Of Hand Sanitizers, Study Finds : Goats and Soda : NPR - says that certain types of bacteria are becoming more “tolerant” of the sanitizers.
No, Purell Does Not Breed Super-Anything | Science-Based Medicine - cites a paper which describes how the alcohol disrupts several parts of the bacteria at once.
This site (a cleaning products group, I gather) says that "For some ingredients it’s most unlikely that bacteria could develop tolerance because they literally take the bacteria apart, rather than interfering with their workings. ". It goes on to claim that there have been no reports of bacteria developing resistance to the use of cleaning products (something along the lines of “you can’t prove it” versus “proven NOT to happen”).
And a thread at Reddit which sums things up nicely:
Obviously that thread doesn’t have the citations but it’s much like what I recalled reading.
There is a link there, though, to an article on potential resistance to bleach: Hsp33 confers bleach resistance by protecting elongation factor Tu against oxidative degradation in Vibrio cholerae - PubMed (not terribly reassuring - though there’s enough jargon there that I’m not sure it would happen in “in vivo” scenarios… not sure it wouldn’t either…).
All in all, I would’t panic about the disinfectants - these procedures have been used for decades and there’ve been no reports of issues. And most people with covid-19 aren’t getting antibiotics. Just don’t go swilling any fish tank cleaner.
Besides, the biggest single factor in antibiotic over- and misuse, and resistance, is their use in livestock. If an animal is sick (and crowded feedlots are a great way to spread disease, but I digress) antibiotics are warranted, but I DO NOT advocate their use in poultry as a growth enhancer.
Yes, that’s why some poultry feeds have a nearly-homeopathic dose of tetracycline; it was discovered decades ago that a tiny dose of tetracycline makes some breeds of poultry grow faster, enough that they can go to market a day or two earlier.
Great replies, thanks to both of you. Not as worrisome as I’d imagined.