Do you have different references? He didn't make it up.
Just read all the comments in the original link you provided. Someone wrote
Other issues – IMO the rate of severe allergic reactions from oral antibiotics (0.24%) is an overestimate. In a recent publication the rate is much lower 1 out of several million. (Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy, Volume 60, Issue 5, November 2007, Pages 1172–1173,
Choose Your Affiliation - NYU Health Sciences Library).
J Allergy Clin Immunol. 2010 May;125(5):1098-1104.e1. doi: 10.1016/j.jaci.2010.02.009. Epub 2010 Apr 14. Anaphylaxis epidemiology in patients with and patients without asthma: a United Kingdom database review. 21 / 100,000 person years.
Plus (and this is me writing)....0.24% just seems too high. I see severe allergic reactions (which I presumably means requiring epinephrine, or they have definition of anaphylaxis which I guess means they should get epi) maybe 4x / year. Most of these are to peanuts, milk, stuff like that.
Anyway.....
There is evidence...
There is evidence...
There is evidence...
That's the preceding comment for so many issues on this forum from tons of posters, including myself. We often read a journal article (or a summary like the link above) quickly, perhaps don't read it entirely, or over time forget little nuances to the data here and there. The main thing is there is a TON of evidence and unless one is employed to go over all the evidence and become an expert in evidence, decide what evidence is good, what evidence is bad, most people (including me, you, and just about everybody else in health care) tend to give too much weight too few studies or over-generalize results from their cursory reading. Plus...I also think that if people want to believe "X", and they read a paper that supports "X", they tend to stick to their belief and never change. Or change comes a long time in the future.
It very well could be that antibiotics for strep throat provides modest benefit. But there is a benefit as far as those who I consider to know the most about this....and it's not the author of that article above.
I also find it interesting that the notion of getting better 16h sooner is not worth it. That is a judgement call yet some doctors want to impose that doctrine on all patients.
And yes, I agree that Tamiflu is lousy. But I don't NOT give it....I just tell people that there is a medicine that the CDC recommends, I think it's kind of lousy, this and that, blah blah blah, and let the patient make the decision.