HEALTH INTEL: Antimicrobial Resistance Timeline & Economic Impact The Silent Crisis: Antibiotic resistance kills an estimated 1.27 million people globally per year (2019 data), surpassing deaths from HIV/AIDS and malaria combined. Since Fleming's penicillin discovery in 1928, we've cycled through five major antibiotic generations, yet bacteria have adapted to each within 5-15 years—a pattern accelerating due to agricultural overuse (70% of antibiotics in the US go to livestock, not humans). Why it matters: We're approaching a post-antibiotic era where routine infections become lethal; the World Bank projects $100+ trillion in lost economic output by 2050 if resistance spreads unchecked, while alternative therapies (phage therapy, immunotherapy) remain 10-15 years from mainstream adoption. This fundamentally reshapes medicine's foundation—the assumption that infection is survivable.