I know what you're all thinking, but no, I am going to resist the temptation to point out what "Fungal Apocalypse" would make a great name for, as this is a very serious topic, and to do so would be immature.
Also...
Regardless, the fungal apocalypse is upon us!
The Battle Against the Fungal Apocalypse Is Just Beginning
Fungal infections are rising worldwide and climate change may be to blame. Medicine isn't ready.
The article began with this tale of unbridled horror and bedlam.
IN FEBRUARY, A dermatologist in New York City contacted the state's health department about two female patients, ages 28 and 47, who were not related but suffered from the same troubling problem.
Two unrelated people in a city of 8.8 million people came down with an illness.
They had ringworm, a scaly, crusty, disfiguring rash covering large portions of their bodies. Ringworm sounds like a parasite, but it is caused by a fungus — and in both cases, the fungus was a species that had never been recorded in the US.
Please, try to stay composed, it's the only way we're going to get through these dark times of occasional illness and widespread not dying.
Patient A... The rash resolved completely after completing a 4-week course of itraconazole.
Patient B... [after receiving various ineffective treatments over the course of a few months] ...then received a 4-week course of griseofulvin therapy, resulting in approximately 80% improvement.
That was from a CDC report.
While the fungus was "severely drug resistant," it eventually succumbed to treatment, strongly suggesting that medicine is maybe kind of ready?
No matter. It's not like hysteria is going to foment itself.
Then, in March, some of those same CDC investigators reported that a fungus they had been tracking — Candida auris, an extremely drug-resistant yeast that invades health care facilities and kills two-thirds of the people infected with it — had risen to more than 10,000 cases since it was identified in the US in 2016, tripling in just two years.
Some of you might remember our old friend C. auris from earlier this year, and two-thirds is certainly a terrifying mortality rate.
Somewhat less terrifying when you click through.
In general, C. auris is not a threat to healthy people. People who are very sick, have invasive medical devices, or have long or frequent stays in healthcare facilities are at increased risk for acquiring C. auris.
Terrible for those people of course, and measures should be taken to protect them, but as apocalypses go, this is less "Great Flood" and more "showers may spoil your afternoon barbecue plans."
In April, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services rushed to investigate cases of a fungal infection called blastomycosis centered on a paper mill, an outbreak that would grow to 118 people, the largest ever recorded.
It's nasty, but still uncommon, and as workplace hazards go, doesn't even come close to slip-and-falls.
And in May, US and Mexican health authorities jointly rang an alarm over cases of meningitis, caused by the fungus Fusarium solani, which seemed to have spread to more than 150 clinic patients via contaminated anesthesia products. By mid-August, 12 people had died.
People were injected with a fungus.
That's not a communicable public health hazard.
That's a product liability issue.
All of those outbreaks...
All four of them!
...are different: in size, in pathogen, in location, and the people they affected. But what links them is that they were all caused by fungi — and to the small cadre of researchers who keep track of such things, that is worrisome.
The experts share a sense, supported by incomplete data but also backed by hunch, that serious fungal infections are occurring more frequently, affecting more people, and also are becoming harder to treat.
Experts share a sense supported by incomplete data backed by a hunch.
Not to worry, they have more than that.
They have a feeling.
"We don't have good surveillance for fungal infections," admits Tom Chiller, an infectious disease physician and chief of the CDC's mycotic diseases branch. "So it's hard to give a fully data-driven answer. But the feeling is definitely that there is an increase."
The question is: Why?
Oh, we're jumping straight to "why is it happening" without first determining "is it happening?"
Okay, then.
There may be multiple answers. More people are living longer with chronic illnesses, and their impaired immune systems make them vulnerable.
Sure, that's one obvious conclusion, and a manageable one, but it does not offer any opportunities to reshape society in a manner to our betters' liking.
If you've been waiting for the climate angle, your patience is about to be rewarded.
But the problem isn't only that fungal illnesses are more frequent; it is also that new pathogens are emerging and existing ones are claiming new territory. When experts try to imagine...
"Imagine" is probably the right word.
...what could exert such widespread influence, they land on the possibility that the problem is climate change.
"Speculative as it is...
After you've lead with hunches and feelings, I feel like you've already crossed the speculation Rubicon, so sure, go all in.
...it's entirely possible that if you have an environmental organism with a very specific ecological niche, out there in the world, you only need a very small change in the surface temperature or the air temperature to alter its niche and allow it to proliferate," says Neil Stone, a physician and fungal infections lead at University College London Hospitals. "And it's that plausibility, and the lack of any alternative explanation, which makes it believable as a hypothesis."
Buckle up because we are about to enter a land where logic holds no power over the narrative, where cause-and-effect are irrelevant, and the basic tenets of science are abandoned quicker than a Biden grandchild born out of wedlock.
Arturo Casadevall, a physician and chair of molecular microbiology and immunology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, proposed more than a decade ago that the rise of mammals over dinosaurs was propelled by an inherent protection: Internally, we're too hot. Most fungi flourish at 30 degrees Celsius or less, while our body temperature hovers between 36 and 37 degrees Celsius. (That's from 96.8 to the familiar 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit.) So when an asteroid smashed into the Earth 65 million years ago, throwing up a cloud of pulverized vegetation and soil and the fungi those would have contained, the Earth's dominant reptiles were vulnerable, but early mammals were not.
Interesting theory.
But Casadevall warned of a corollary possibility: If fungi increased their thermotolerance, learning to live at higher temperatures as the climate warms, mammals could lose that built-in protection — and he proposed that the weird success of C. auris might indicate it is the first fungal pathogen whose adaptation to warmth allowed it to find a new niche.
What does this mean?
Fungi are on the move.
Oh no! Fungi can move?
This is disturbing.
Oh, wait, not individually, as a species.
However fungi are relocating, they appear to be adapting to their new homes, and changes in temperature and precipitation patterns may be part of that.
Let's noodle over this for a moment.
Climate alarmists generally agree that the earth has warmed about two degrees since the pre-industrial era (late 1800s).
To take the hypothesis above seriously, which is based on a sense, a hunch, incomplete data, and a feeling, we must first believe that a 2 degree change in temperatures is enough to unleash a fungal cataclysm as our pale, slimy friends use the extra two degrees to better adapt to our warm mammalian bodies.
There might be a little problem with that.
First, let's take Miami.
The temperatures in Miami alone typically range between 62 and 90 degrees Fahrenheit, a 28-degree difference.
That's just in one city.
Let's take a look at Bangor, Maine, about 1500 miles north up the east coast.
Temperatures range from 10 to 80 degrees, a full 70-degree span.
In both cities, precipitation and humidity also vary materially.
The span of temperature between the two?
Oh, about 45 times the purported global warming over the past 130 years or so.
Do they really expect you to believe that a hunch based on incomplete data and a hypothesis that makes no sense is legitimate science?
No, not really.
All they expect is for you to shut up.
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