Imagine you want to disable a car. You could open the hood and unplug the battery. Or you could fire a missile at it.
Antibiotics are like unplugging the battery. It only works if you can get under the hood and it wouldn’t work at all on electric cars. It’s selective.
Alcohol is like a missile. It destroys everything. You can’t evolve resistance to missiles. You just have to hope you don’t get hit.
This, the polarity of the cell which permits selective permeability & a hydrophilic environment means alcohol’s will be functional as antiseptics due to the hydroxyl (OH) group. However, alcohol needs to be approximately 70% for max efficiency as OH2 facilities it’s ability to denature the cell.
The 0.01% that remain generally aren’t enough to thrive to the point of reinfection before naturally dying off. There’s usually too few organisms left to do anything.
