The alarm over the arrival of a grave new superbug in the United States is obscuring part of the story that is crucial to understanding what might happen next. Here it is: The woman who was carrying an E. coli containing resistance to the last-resort antibiotic colistin went for medical care because she had what felt like a routine urinary tract infection, a UTI for short.

The discovery of colistin-resistant bacteria is worrisome: Researchers have been watching for the arrival of this new superbug  for several months. But that it was found in  urine sample puts the discovery into a larger context. Highly drug resistant urinary tract infections happen potentially hundreds of thousands of times a year just in the United States. A small, dedicated corps of researchers has