The Silent Epidemic: Antibiotic Resistance in Context Antibiotic-resistant infections kill an estimated 1.27 million people globally each year, yet most people still don't understand how resistance develops. When Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928, a simple bacterial infection meant death; by the 1950s-60s, antibiotics seemed to have conquered infectious disease entirely. Today, bacteria evolve resistance faster than we can develop new drugs—only 12 new antibiotics have been approved since 2010, while resistance patterns that took decades to emerge in the 1980s now appear in months. This matters because we're approaching a post-antibiotic era where routine surgeries, childbirth, and common infections become life-threatening again, potentially reversing 75 years of medical progress and costing the global economy up to $100 trillion by 2050.