1258 Fungal from the Jungle

Mother Earth is striking back. You’ve probably heard of the largest organism on earth. It’s a fungus. Buried underneath an Oregon forest, it stretches for acres.
All genetically distinct, all one organism, sending up little mushrooms and spreading spores into the surrounding environment. Only dangerous if you are allergic to the microscopic spores you suck in when you walk through that forest.
Guess what? It may be time to put on the avian flu masks. Because a new killer fungus in among us. It’s Cryptococcus gattii, a tropical bark-dwelling fungus. Fungal from the jungle. It’s recently reached the northwest, possibly from imported plants and/or timber.
You’ve heard of poison mushrooms that kill you when you bite them. This is a bark-dwelling fungus that can kill you from just breathing its spores. So this really is a case of the bark being worse than the bite.
Back in the tropics, it had a troubling 9% mortality rate. Apparently it can survive up here because it’s now warm enough. And it’s also suddenly got more virulent. It has killed 25% of the people known to be infected. The scientist Edward Byrnes is quoted as saying, “It’s particularly worrisome because it seems to be a threat to otherwise healthy people.”
Which makes it sound especially horrible. But really, isn’t all sickness a threat to otherwise healthy people? The common cold is a threat to an otherwise healthy person without a cold.
Now he has a cold.
Still, the idea of walking through a forest and sucking in a death cloud of mushroom sex dust seems like a spooky science fiction plot. What would they name such a movie?
“Creeping Mushrooms of Death” perhaps.
Or I know—
“Fungi on the Prowl...”
America, ya gotta love it.