@cazzie Even if it is bacterial it usually can be faught by the body on it’s own. If it is bacterial treating it with drugs gets the child back to school faster, because it speeds up the curing process.
The doctors don’t test, so usually the way you know is if you start the antibiotic treatement and within 48 hours it improves greatly then the antibiotics are working, which means bacterial.
The bacterial infection usually has worse symptoms than the viral.
There is a good chance the doctor could be guessing wrong, but it doesn’t matter much in the long run. If it doesn’t go away after a week, then I say go for the antibiotics.
For a while doctors were waiting to give antibiotic for ear infections there was a whole movement that ear infections were over treated with antibiotics, or treated too soon. More recently studies have been done showing it is better to give the antibiotics. The medical community goes back and forth on all these things.