The rise of the “superbugs” is here. The death toll is already in the millions each year, and it won’t be too long before “superbugs” are killing tens of millions of people each year. In my last book I identified a number of long-term trends that threaten to collapse our society, and now you can add this one to the list. The clock really is ticking for humanity, but most people in the general population simply do not understand what we are facing. They just assume that life will go on as it always has, but that is simply not going to be possible.
If you are not familiar with “antimicrobial resistance”, the following is a decent definition from the official CDC website…
Antimicrobial resistance happens when germs like bacteria and fungi develop the ability to defeat the drugs designed to kill them. That means the germs are not killed and continue to grow. Resistant infections can be difficult, and sometimes impossible, to treat.
According to Dr. Chris Murray, antimicrobial resistance “is actually now one of the leading causes of death in the world”.
It accounts for more deaths than tuberculosis, it accounts for more deaths than malaria, and it accounts for more deaths than HIV/AIDS.
So we are talking about a crisis that is already incredibly serious.
Sadly, this is just the beginning. USA Today is reporting that antimicrobial resistance is now killing more than 5 million people a year, but the death toll is “expected to grow into the tens of millions within a few decades”…
In 2019, the last year data is available, more than 2.8 million Americans had antimicrobial-resistant infections and more than 35,000 died, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Worldwide, deaths already top 5 million a year and are expected to grow into the tens of millions within a few decades.
If “superbugs” are soon killing tens of millions of people per year, that will mean that there will be hundreds of millions of deaths by the end of this century.
And that is actually an optimistic forecast. There are some that believe that the death toll could be far worse because “bacteria are mutating to evade antibiotics at a pace far faster than many researchers had previously forecast”.
Scientists tell us that one of the big reasons this is happening is because we have been overusing antibiotics.
Way too often, doctors are prescribing antibiotics for their patients when they don’t really need them.
But even more importantly, in recent decades it has become common practice to feed antibiotics to livestock so that they will get bigger…
The commercial raising of animals for food has contributed to the problem. For decades, breeders have fed their livestock antibiotics. At first, they started out trying to help sick animals get well. But they noticed that animals fed antibiotics got big faster. So it became standard practice to include antibiotics in the feed of every animal, from poultry to fish to pigs to cows.
So now resistance to antibiotics is spreading like wildfire, and we are seeing some tremendous tragedies as a result.
For example, when a 24-year-old woman scraped her knee on some rocks in 2012, she never imagined it would lead to all four limbs being amputated…
In her recent talk, Wilson told the story of Aimee Copeland, a 24-year-old grad student when she fell off a zip line in 2012 and scraped her knee on some rocks in the river below.
Copeland’s leg was stitched up and she was sent home with antibiotics, but the wound quickly got infected. Available drugs were no match for the naturally antibiotic-resistant bacteria she had picked up in the water.
Kidney and heart failure followed, along with the amputation of all four limbs.
In the early days of antibiotics, something like this would not have happened.
But now the era of the “superbugs” has arrived, and we are extremely vulnerable.
Just consider what is happening on the front lines in Ukraine. It is being reported that patients are showing up with bacteria that are “showing extreme antibiotic resistance”…
Bacteria found in hospital patients in Ukraine is showing extreme antibiotic resistance, making it harder to treat the wounded and ill in this war-torn country, new research warns.
“I am quite thick-skinned and have witnessed numerous situations involving patients and bacteria,” said study author and bacteriologist Kristian Riesbeck. “However, I must admit that I have never encountered bacteria as resistant as this before.”
This should deeply alarm all of us.
In one case, a Ukrainian soldier actually became infected with six different kinds of extremely resistant bacteria…
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is fueling a dangerous rise in bacterial drug resistance—an alarming reality made clear by a recent case report of an injured Ukrainian soldier who became infected with six different extensively drug-resistant bacteria, one of which was resistant to every antibiotic tested.
Health experts are sounding the alarm that the nearly unbeatable germs will likely spread beyond the war-torn country’s borders. “Given the forced migration of the population, multidrug resistance of wound pathogens is now a problem not only for Ukraine but also for healthcare systems around the world, especially in the EU,” Ukrainian scientists and doctors wrote in a recent letter in the Irish Journal of Medical Scientists.
We have now entered a time when literally any infection can potentially be life-threatening.
It has been estimated that antimicrobial resistance will cost the global economy 100 trillion dollars by the year 2050.
To put that in perspective, the U.S. national debt is 32 trillion dollars right now, and that is the largest single financial debt in the history of the entire world.
It would help if the big pharmaceutical companies were feverishly working to develop new antibiotics, but that just isn’t happening…
Despite the crucial need for new antibiotics, there has been little innovation in the past 20 years. According to a report from the Biotechnology Innovation Organization, “more than 82% of all antibiotic approvals occurred prior to the year 2000.” The last new antibiotic class was oxazolidinones, which were developed in the early 2000s.
Pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies have failed to invest in new classes of antibiotics because the market is seen as “risky and relatively unprofitable,” according to a report from Elias Mossialos of the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Pharmaceutical companies make money by getting people hooked on their very expensive drugs for long periods of time.
But antibiotics are often used for just a week or two, and so there is little incentive to develop them…
Right now, there’s no financial incentive for a company to spend as long as a decade and upward of $1.5 billion developing an antibiotic that someone will use only for a week or two ‒ limiting the amount a company can charge ‒ and which might be obsolete in four or five years as bacteria become resistant.
As a society, our priorities are so messed up.
Instead of doing the things that really need to be done for our long-term good, we are focused on stuff like this…
A Japanese native has transformed himself into a canine after forking out more than $14,000 for a custom-made collie costume.
The private citizen, who goes only by Toco online, says the unusual garment has helped actualize his dream of “becoming an animal.”
Footage shared to Toco’s YouTube channel, where he boasts more than 32,000 subscribers, shows him clad in the costume as he frolics on a lawn, rolls on a floor, and plays fetch.
Sometimes I wonder how we even made it this far.
If we don’t start taking antimicrobial resistance very seriously and devote more resources to fighting it, the yearly death toll will soon be catastrophic.
And when you add in all of the other cataclysmic threats that humanity is now facing, the long-term outlook for our society is exceedingly bleak.
Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.
About the Author: My name is Michael and my brand new book entitled “End Times” is now available on Amazon.com. In addition to my new book I have written six other books that are available on Amazon.com including “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”. (#CommissionsEarned) When you purchase any of these books you help to support the work that I am doing, and one way that you can really help is by sending copies as gifts to family and friends. Time is short, and I need help getting these warnings into the hands of as many people as possible. I have also started a brand new Substack newsletter, and I encourage you to subscribe so that you won’t miss any of the latest updates. I have published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe. I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but I also ask that they include this “About the Author” section with each article. The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions. I encourage you to follow me on social media on Facebook and Twitter, and any way that you can share these articles with others is definitely a great help. These are such troubled times, and people need hope. John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” If you have not already done so, I strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.