Is this the way the world ends? Humans have officially lost the war against bacteria

Bacteria is resistant to all known antibiotics.

For decades, doctors have warned that germs are evolving faster than we can produce new antibiotics to kill them. Eventually our antibiotics will be powerless and millions will die. We have wondered when that day would arrive. We now have an answer, 2016.

LOS ANGELES, CA (California Network) -- Nobody knows the actual date when we lost the war to superbugs, but we know it was sometime before August 2016 when a woman with a history of travel to India, contracted a bacterial infection that was resistant to all 26 known antibiotics in the human arsenal. The patient died from her infection shortly afterwards.

What this means is there is a strain of bacteria in the world, likely in India, that is resistant to all antibiotics. Almost anyone who is infected will simply die, we are out of treatment options. Should the disease begin to spread globally, a major human catastrophe could be at hand.

Presently, the powers that be have no control over the bacteria. There are no secret teams of crack doctors and military personnel performing a rapid response mission to halt the disease. It's just man vs. nature, as it has been for thousands of years, and nature is winning.

We know the killer's name, Klebsiella pneumoniae. The bacteria is surprisingly common, found in the soil, and even in our own mouths, skin, and intestines. But on rare occasions it can be inhaled into the lungs where it can cause pneumonia in anyone with a weakened immune system.

Until now, a visit to the hospital and a course of antibiotics was the solution. It remains the solution so far, but somewhere in India there is a strain that cannot be cured. If that strain spreads, we can expect millions of people to die. The problem is that spreading is easy because most people carry the bacteria without any symptoms. We won't know where it's spread until it's too late; it's the perfect storm.

Antibiotic resistance has been developing since antibiotics were invented. Antibiotics are drugs which kill bacteria, but they don't always kill all of the bacteria. Commonly, some bacteria escape killing because they have some level of resistance to the antibiotic. These bacteria reproduce, passing on their resistant genes to subsequent generations. Over time, the bacteria become increasingly resistant to the drugs.  Eventually, the bacteria evolve resistance to all antibiotics, and then we're in trouble.

Speaking on NPR, Dr. James Johnson, professor of infectious diseases at the University of Minnesota said, "People keep asking me, how close are we to going off the cliff... "Come on people. We're off the cliff. It's already happening. People are dying. It's right here, right now. Sure, it's going to get worse. But we're already there."

About 700,000 people around the globe die from antibiotic resistant infections. Some 23,000 of those victims are in the United States. However, these infections can still be treated with advanced antibiotics. But an antibiotic resistant bug would be impossible to stop, no matter what antibiotics are used.

Right now, there is a strain of a common bacteria that is resistant to all antibiotics. It has been seen in the U.S. We can only wonder if this antibiotic strain is spreading globally as we speak. If it is, a human catastrophe will be inevitable.

We can only wait and see.

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