It didn't take long for that paranoia to set in!

[thehuckster]

I don't think it's the worry of bacteria evolving into super bugs due to sanitizing too frequently. I think it's the idea that these chemicals cannot destroy 100% of bacteria on surfaces, and so the ones that are strong enough to resist the purge suddenly have no competition and can multiply that much faster. Therefore, you get super bugs taking over areas that used to be covered with more benign bacteria that one killed off using sanitizers too much.

This explains the situation well.

Antibiotics use a far different mechanism than antibacterial soaps and such. To use an analogy, antibiotics is sort of like a virus or bacterial pandemic: It's going to infect a lot of people, but some will develop a resistance, and if the same strain comes back, it will be far less effective. Antibacterial soaps is more like having a day of sulfuric acid rain. It'll still not kill everyone, and the people who survive might be stronger than the others, but they very likely won't survive the next rain.

Oversanitizing with antibacterial chemicals has been talked about in regards to not giving people's immune systems enough exposure to viruses and bacteria to make the necessary antibodies they make naturally, and some have theorized it's one of the factors in people developing allergies. But making superbugs that will survive cleaning chemicals is not one of them.

This is why doctors are a lot more encouraging to use hand-sanitizer to prevent cold and flu, but are becoming more wary about prescribing antibiotics for every possible bacteria infection.