“Experts” Continuing to Blame Rise in Valley Fever Cases on #ClimateCrisis Pseudoscience
Valley Fever is a fungal disease. Fortunately, a novel and effective new treatment targeting fungi has emerged.
Back in 2019, way before the covid pandemic, I reported on a potentially life-threatening fungal illness rapidly spreading throughout central California and blamed it on….climate change! I crunched the numbers and concluded:
I will just point out that between the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 and our former governor’s race to embrace the Paris Climate Accord, the state’s climate should be preventing such catastrophes.
Hopefully, the researchers will find a cure quickly, as climate solutions to this problem will not be nearly as effective as medical ones.
Clearly, most normal people continue the summers to be hot and the winters cold as they go about their lives. As the recent terror over “global boiling” hasn’t sparked enough fear, Valley Fever cases are back in the news.
More than 500,000 Americans could be sickened each year by Valley fever, the disease caused by breathing in the fungus Coccidioides, according to preliminary estimates developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The draft figures, which were disclosed in a CDC presentation to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, suggest the toll inflicted on Americans by the fungus could be more than triple the size of widely cited previous estimates.
“There’s just not a ton of awareness or knowledge about the disease. We do see a lot of travel associated cases, we’ve seen reports of cases popping up in places where we wouldn’t have typically expected Valley fever to be endemic,” Samantha Williams, an epidemiologist with the CDC’s Mycotic Diseases Branch, told CBS News.
Williams is part of the team that has been refining these forthcoming estimates of cases of Valley fever, which scientists call Coccidioidomycosis. It is one of a range of new projects aimed at ramping up the agency’s response to the illness, which primarily occurs in the Southwest, from California to central Texas.
Back in California, public health officials are blaming the uptick on too much rain…which broke the back of the recent drought cycle in this state.
“California’s dry conditions, combined with recent heavy winter rains could result in increasing valley fever cases in the coming months,” California Department of Public Health Director Dr. Tomás Aragón said in a news release.
During a drought, the fungus that causes valley fever often is less active, but it grows once the rains return, according to the Department of Public Health. Valley fever cases have been lowest during drought and highest in the years immediately following a drought, raising concerns for this summer and fall after the record-breaking rain that hit California.
No matter how much climate-angst is expressed and how many economy-crushing, liberty-limiting policies are enacted, lifeforms like fungi have a tendency to adapt and persevere. That is why I asserted the better bet would be the focus on medical treatment.
Now, a novel and effective new treatment targeting fungi has emerged.
Researchers at the RIKEN Center for Sustainable Research Science (CSRS) and the University of Toronto have discovered an innovative way to combat fungal infections.
This method revolves around obstructing the fungi’s ability to produce fatty acids, a primary component of fats.
With resistance to anti-fungal drugs increasing, this new tactic, which works differently and is effective against a wide range of fungal species, could prove particularly beneficial. The study was published in the scientific journal Cell Chemical Biology.
Most people are familiar with athlete’s foot, a relatively benign health issue easily resolved with a trip to the drugstore. However, other fungal infections, caused by Candida, Cryptococcus, and Aspergillus types of fungi, are far more serious. In fact, these fungi are responsible for millions of deaths every year. Like bacteria’s growing resistance to antibiotics, resistance to anti-fungal medications is also on the rise globally. Consequently, the death toll is likely to increase in the foreseeable future without immediate intervention.
I wonder how much farther along we might be on finding effective treatments against fungi if billions weren’t diverted to fight a coronavirus that mainly causes cold-and-flue symptoms in individuals not suffering from comorbidities.
Most people who inhale Coccidioidomycosis, the fungus causing Valley Fever, have no symptoms. Many others purge it from their bodies without treatment after suffering mild respiratory symptoms. However, it can cause serious health effects in some individuals.
Approximately 5 to 10% of people who get Valley fever will develop serious or long-term problems in their lungs.4 In an even smaller percent of people (about 1%), the infection spreads from the lungs to other parts of the body, such as the central nervous system (brain and spinal cord), skin, or bones and joints.
It might be nice if the media directed some of the climate panics toward promoting good science and effective research. Perhaps we would have had more treatment options available and fewer cases.
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Comments
Kamala and AOC want to address this fungal emergency by establishing an agency headed by some fun guy.
A non-white albino left handed Muslim lesbian would be their pick.
In one of his books Oliver Sacks talks about being on a motorcycle road trip. He stopped roadside to rest, found a cushy mat of something, laid down, and fell asleep.
And gosh, a native valley fungal growth highly adapted to a cycle of drought and drench over the course of hundreds of thousands of years? Impossible!
No, let us pretend it’s due to Gaia’s Fiery Dragon Breath.. She’s a capricious and vengeful god!
Yesterday, this appeared …
Federal workers have been authorized to leave work early as severe weather is expected to hit the Washington, D.C., area and parts of the Northeast region of the country. In a news release Monday, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) said federal employees located in the D.C. area were authorized to leave their workplaces two hours earlier than expected, and that all employees must evacuate their buildings “no later than 3:00 at which time Federal offices are closed.”
When I got home the weather people were breathless .. “Extreme Weather Watch”, like we never ever get thunderstorms in the summer.
This all smelled of “Climate Change” hysteria.
The wussification of America continues…
DC-adjacent Virginia was the only place I ever lived that canceled school on account of clouds.
“Experts” again? Blah blah blah…
Here I thought Valley Fever was the fault of the Patriarchy.
Dumb me.
Gavin Newsom speaks about climate change in a quasi religious mode; like an Imam declaring “inshallah,” god wills it. Wildfire? inshallah! Reservoir water levels? Inshallah! It’s beyond [my] mortal control!
It’s the cynical politicial-huckster’s way of avoiding responsibility.
If rain makes it grow, we ought be knee deep in fungus in the PNW, esp. over in Forks and the Olympic rain forest.
Candida was easily treated by Nystatin. As a teen in the 60’s, it was common for the MD to prescribe Tetracycline to treat chronic acne. The downside was killing off all the good bacteria in the gut and Candida was quick to overgrow – causing thrush, UTIs, sinus problems, skin rashes wherever there’s perspiration, etc. A naturopath / MD put me on a course of Nystatin powder, mixed in water which cleared up all my skin and gut problems in just a few weeks. Naturally, since the treatment works and is so effective, the government had to make it far more difficult to acquire. Thankfully there are other OTC treatments now whenever it flares up again.
Wait, you’re telling me that in the desert Southwest of the United States that in the summertime we’ll sometimes get hot weather and then a lot of rain, and when that happens we’ll get fungal growth? Who knew? Wait! It gets better! Some people are allergic to this mold growth? Wow, must be CLIMATE BOILING!
At some point it might become necessary to start beating the fu*k out of these liars until they STFU.
With vaccination and each booster , the immune system takes a hit. So the list includes heart, vascular, neuro, (turbo) cancer and infections.
40 years ago, we knew Valley Fever in Arizona was real, but had absolutely no idea what caused it, much less how to cure it.
About 25-30 years ago they finally identified it as a fungal infection.
The fungus resides in the ground, If left undisturbed, nobody is the wiser.
As soon as you rev up the earthmovers to build new housing developments, Valley Fever spikes. Like precious ores, Valley Fever doesn’t sit around on the surface, you have to actively dig for it.
Anybody claiming it came out on account of rain is gaslighting you.
(It’s debilitating to people, but horribly fatal to dogs.)