You're right. Of course you have to take the prescribed dose if you actually test positive for the disease. Earlier in the discussion we were referring to those who are tested by show no signs of anthrax but yet are prescribed Cipro simply because they were at a sight where traces may have shown up. They've been telling us all along not to take it unnecessarily because you will build up a tolerance to it.
Of course you have to take the prescribed dose if you actually test positive for the disease.
Again, bad info. If you begin a course of antibiotics, for any reason, you must complete the prescribed dose/time period for taking, etc. This is especially true in propholactic usage.
Think of the rationale behind taking propholacitc dose; to prevent growth and maturing of disease from beyond a sub-clinical level. The resaon to take a propholactic dose of antibiotic is to kill the bacteria while they are in your body but in too small amounts and/or at too low a level of infection to be see clinically, (that is by symptoms.)
99% of people taking propholactic dose have no need to do so. The problem is, we don't know who the safe 99% are, and therefore we don't know who the infected 1% is. If you were the one percent with anthrax and took propholactic antibiotics while disease was sub-clinical, i.e. it was running around your blood sreeam but no physical symptoms were seen yet, the antibiotic would begin to kill those germs. The weak, easilly killed germs would be first to be killed by the antibiotic. But if you stopped before talking full dose, then the remaining, stronger, harder to kill germs would remain. Soon they would begin to multiply again in the absence of the antibiotic. Soon you would have a germ that was very resistant to antibiotic running around through your body! Not good! (Probably fatal with anthrax.)
If you start a course of antibiotics, complete them with no regard to symptoms or lack thereof, or why you started to take them in the first place. It doesn't matter how good you feel, once you begin, take all the prescription! To do otherwise can kill you.
PS. Every new nfection is just that, a new infection. The old rumor that overtaking antibiotics will "weaken" your response to the next infection is completely false. The danger is a partial dose, as described above.