It's an oxidizer, like sodium hypochlorite (AKA bleach) and is still useful for sanitizing things (like the mouth guard your kid wears for some sports).

If you're using it as a mouth rinse to lower the bacteria count, I'd suggest you instead use a solution of water and xylitol (a wood alcohol). It tastes sweet to us, but is toxic to bacteria as they try to process it like food and essentially starve (same process that makes it toxic to pets). It's safe for us humans, can be used as an artificial sweetener.

That said, I'd ask the author, after telling us what topical antibiotic not to use, follow up with what's the most effective. (e.g. mercurochrome, iodine, polymyxin, bacitracin, sulfur compounds) Personally, I go with sulfur when I have a choice, but I’m pretty old school.

[edit]I’ve had a few responses to this, but if you’re expecting a response from me in return, I’d ask you ‘make this comment an article’ as I cannot respond otherwise.

Responding to a couple of them here: 1) I have no idea what concentration of water/xylitol to use in place of a dilute hypochloride solution for gum issues. Personally, I’d start with gum with xylitol along with whatever you’re doing and see if that helps. 2) yes it’s a wood alcohol, but I’m not suggesting you put just any wood alcohol in your mouth. Methyl alcohol (the ‘usual’ wood alcohol) is not used as a sweetener; xylitol is approved as such). [/edit]

[edit2] Looks like the Medium folks fixed the issue with non-article responses not having a way to be responded to themselves — so no need (any more) to promote responses to articles[/edit2]