As somebody who studies infections in orthopedics (I am a materials engineer who has grants looking at how endemic bacteria in our bodies can colonize or become infections in-vivo), one thing I have seen in over 300 human cases, no pathological bacterial infection is a monoculture. That is no single pathogen causes the infection. In all cases the identified pathogen is simply the one that grew the best in the clinical lab. I have patients that cultured 6 or 7 different bacteria and fungi. Then I have patients who have no obvious infection show 10 or more bacteria present base on 16S metagenomic analysis of the biofilms on the tissues.
I also do the infectious disease lectures for the orthopedic residents here at the medical school.
Strep zoo. is endemic in the environment of a barn. Just Iike staph a is endemic. MRSA and MSSA are also endemic. They are on the skin, live inside us etc. Teh abscesses likely have multiple species of bacteria. The key is local control and debridement. The debridement removes the tissue bacterial biofilm (antibiotics can not penetrate biofilms).
