> We want to destroy microbes (and viruses) in specific contexts, not indiscriminately.
Apart from the known useful ones, like gut flora: no, we really do want to destroy them indiscriminantly. We bleach surfaces to do this, we can bleach air too.
Let's be a little more cautious and observant in our approach to antimicrobial stewardship.
Yes, we can bleach surfaces, but pathogens (in relatively rapid terms) develop resistance [0].
Yes, we can reduce bacteria at factory farms to small numbers with the indiscriminate use of antibiotics in animal feed, but it's easy to observe that this trains pathogens to avoid our most powerful chemical antibiotics.
And so it is with fomites, respiratory pathogens, STDs, and probably even with measures to control arboviruses.
We live in an ecological balance, and discretion is the better part of valor with regard to ensuring that this ecology becomes more likely to nurture increasingly better health outcomes.
Surely not the same thing as Semmelweis. We want to destroy microbes (and viruses) in specific contexts, not indiscriminately.