Not a fun guy!

During the years that I lived in the armpit of California (ahem!) if I didn't have to worry about the bad air quality, there was another invisible danger that we had all been alerted about: Valley fever.

As the CDC notes:

People can get Valley fever by breathing in the microscopic fungal spores from the air, although most people who breathe in the spores don’t get sick. Usually, people who get sick with Valley fever will get better on their own within weeks to months, but some people will need antifungal medication. Certain groups of people are at higher risk for becoming severely ill. It’s difficult to prevent exposure to Coccidioides in areas where it’s common in the environment, but people who are at higher risk for severe Valley fever should try to avoid breathing in large amounts of dust if they’re in these areas.

Farming activity in the valley kicks up dusts, and so does construction activity.  Of course, the probability was low, but it is not as if the probability of getting valley fever was zero either.

The world generally thinks of fungi as something good, especially after the release of the Netflix documentary on this topic.  People are mostly not aware of the bad fungi.

My first (and the only one, I hope) experience with a fungus was back when I was just about getting into teenage.  Discoloration on my skin in a couple of spots.  The ones on the neck were visible too, adding to the self-consciousness of a terribly self-conscious introvert.  Life was stressful.  After a couple of months of home remedies, finally father took me to the doctor, who scraped a tiny bit of the skin for culture analysis even after telling me that it was a fungal infection.

Thankfully, modern medicine helped, and I had one less horror to be self-conscious about!

About a decade ago, when I returned to Oregon after a summer in the old country, I saw those creepy spots again on my skin.  The doctor, also an immigrant from a hot and humid country, assured me it was nothing but the same fungus infection.  The damn things lay in wait for suckers like me.

At least this fungal infection does not kill or maim, unlike the spores that cause valley fever.

But, there are others that can cause a lot of harm.  Like Candida Auris.

Again, from the CDC:

Candida auris is an emerging fungus that presents a serious global health threat. CDC is concerned about C. auris for three main reasons:

1. It is often multidrug-resistant, meaning that it is resistant to multiple antifungal drugs commonly used to treat Candida infections. Some strains are resistant to all three available classes of antifungals.
2. It is difficult to identify with standard laboratory methods, and it can be misidentified in labs without specific technology. Misidentification may lead to inappropriate management.
3. It has caused outbreaks in healthcare settings. For this reason, it is important to quickly identify C. auris in a hospitalized patient so that healthcare facilities can take special precautions to stop its spread.

Resistant to antifungal treatments!

Why is this fungal infection worrisome?

It causes serious infections. C. auris can cause bloodstream infections and even death, particularly in hospital and nursing home patients with serious medical problems. More than 1 in 3 patients with invasive C. auris infection (for example, an infection that affects the blood, heart, or brain) die.

And now add climate change to this.  Why?

Scientists wonder if C. auris is an example of fungi adapting to the warming world and, thereby, gaining abilities to make themselves at home inside our bodies.  Throughout history, "we’ve been protected from fungi because they haven’t adapted to live at the temperatures inside our bodies."

For a fungus to live or die, even a few degrees can make all the difference. As the world continues to warm, a growing number of places will approach internal human body temperature more of the time. Sooner or later, the fungi will learn to adapt. And if they do, they might find a whole new set of hosts in us. ...

Already, over 300 million people globally contract serious fungal infection each year and over 1.5 million of them die. People with certain kinds of infections can develop “fungal balls” inside their lungs.

It is all about survival.  Fungi will do anything to survive, just like viruses and bacteria do.  I hope that we, too, will do everything possible to fight all those tiny bastards that try to kill us!