>>>Or have they simply abandoned trying to find new antibiotics, seeing how little gain is there?
>
>Which is what you wanted. Isn't it?

Nope, unless you count being proven somewhat right under "what I wanted". Actually, the antibiotics are among the most useful medications invented so far (OK, not really invented, extracted from nature, then synthesized). They have moved a whole class of diseases from dangerous/fatal to nuissance/treatable.

But now after a few decades of prescribing them for just about anything, even as a placebo (which miraculously cures many cases of hypochondria), and making huge money on mass-produced cattle variant, which went on for decades after the danger of resistant strains was trumpeted (I've been hearing about that since the seventies).. now it seems they are still given to cattle ("EU acting" but not with a total ban, a few token moves), but the people are presented with obstacles. Perhaps the practice is different in your neck of the woods, but I've heard of cases where the doctors rather gave newer drugs (with bunch of side effects... cases in the wider family) instead of simple antibiotics. And, ah, yes - these newer drugs cost much more.

This practice of doctors avoiding the good old generics in favor of more profitable new ones has come here as well - I've seen a case when a psych drug was administered to suppress hallucinations... while one of its side effects was "may cause hallucinations". And the list of these side effects was longer than the list of indications. The only sure thing about it was that the price was high.