https://youtu.be/9c8NQSJ4Svk
“Meningitis, for example, kills a fair number of people every year but we don’t require everyone to start a regimen of antibiotics before they returned to work,” says Carlson, dismissing the effectiveness of proactive treatments like vaccines.
Obviously, there are a number of problems with people’s claims: Antibiotics are not preventative drugs, and people who are exposed to people with certain types meningitis *are* given antibiotics as a course of treatment on the chance they caught.
Also, there’s a vaccine for influenza-induced meningitis, given to children before the age of six months. It’s been credited with dramatically cutting the incidents of that type of meningitis since its introduction in the mid-1980s. (There’s another for a group of bacteria that cause meningitis as well.) Many colleges and camps require meningitis vaccines, and people entering the military are vaccinated with the approved medicines.
And finally, meningitis isn’t a disease. It’s a condition–sometimes fatal–of inflammation of the coverings of the brain and/or spine. It’s caused by many things: viruses, fungi, bacteria, etc.