Big Pharma is very powerful in the US.

Bitter Pills: Inside the Hazardous World of Legal Drugs: Stephen Fried: 978553378528: Amazon.com: Books
I bought this book when it came out, as I was very interested in the topic and watched this 3rd tier drug leap into first tier just because sales reps encouraged its use.

Back in the late 1990's it was mostly used for prostate and urinary infections. But this family of drugs got approved for community acquired pneumonias and that became the golden goose.

The author's wife developed a seizure disorder from Floxin. And even Oprah's show had a piece on these drugs when one of her
producers had serious brain effects from them.

The brain effects were known right from the get go...as there were warnings in the initial drug insert information to not give high doses to elderly patients. The PN effects became more visible as time passed.

The only people I think who were oblivious were the doctors.
They were heavily gifted by sales reps to prescribe lots of fluoroquinolones, and they used their gifts mightily. Even today as you experienced there are doctors out there still prescribing these drugs willy nilly. The recommendation is that they should be last resort treatments.

But the word is getting out slowly. Last summer my hubby had a cellulitis from a spider bite, and they did not give him a fluoroquinolone in the ER.

The late Dr. Jay Cohen MD suggested online on his website that magnesium supplements may help. You can Google him and see if his site is still available today.