A few months ago, while still tangled up in a lingering viral pandemic that hasn’t really let us go, television viewers the world over were introduced to a chilling idea.
The Last of Us television show, like the iconic video game that inspired it, has brought to agonizing life a post-apocalyptic world ravaged by a global-warming induced pandemic in which fungi — in this case, cordyceps — take over the bodies and brains of the infected, compelling them to kill in an effort to spread.
And then, just a week after the season one finale aired, the Centers for Disease Control sent out a disconcerting tweet.
“Candida auris, a deadly fungus, saw a steady increase in US healthcare facilities in 2020-21.”
Can it turn us into murderous zombies? No, but it has killed between 30 to 60 percent of those it has infected.
Is it likely to cause a Last of Us-style pandemic? No, but Infections in American hospitals are up 95 percent.
The threat posed by this fungus is real, the CDC calls it a serious global health threat. So what do we need to know?
In this episode, host Bonnie Petrie speaks with Dr. Jose Lopez-Ribot, a microbiologist and the Associate Director of The South Texas Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases at the University of Texas at San Antonio.
