XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, ca.politics, soc.culture.african.american   
   XPost: talk.politics.guns   
   From: bullshit.artists@washpost.com   
      
   On 19 Nov 2023, Red State Pedophiles for DeSantis    
   posted some news:ujdenl$3snkp$3@dont-email.me:   
      
   > Not one shred of scientific evidence was presented by the Washington   
   > Post or the medicos.  VALLEY FEVER, look it up.   
      
   BAKERSFIELD, Calif. - At some point, Erik McIntyre inhaled the fungal   
   spores. He couldn't see them, or feel them, and it was weeks before he   
   began to lose energy, to drop weight, to cough up blood at a karaoke bar   
   in Arizona.   
      
   Now that he's paralyzed from Valley fever, in a nursing home at age 53,   
   the former U.S. Navy electrician's day begins at 5 a.m. with a rectal   
   tube procedure to release gas trapped in his stomach. The antifungal   
   injections that left him retching and shaking are less frequent now, and   
   the lesions where the fungus grew on his face and arms have faded to   
   scars. But he knows he will never be cured, or probably walk again.   
      
   "I try not to dwell on what could have been," he said.   
      
   McIntyre can imagine the moment he encountered those microscopic spores.   
   He remembers driving across dusty Phoenix suburbs with his windows down.   
   But he can't be sure.   
      
   These days, the fungus could be anywhere.   
      
   Valley fever has long haunted the American Southwest: Soldiers on dusty   
   military bases, prisoners in wind-swept jails, construction workers   
   pushing new suburbs farther into deserts have all encountered   
   coccidioides, the flesh-eating fungus that causes Valley fever. But the   
   threat is growing. Cases have roughly quadrupled over the past two   
   decades, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.   
      
   A key reason for Valley fever's spread, researchers say, may be   
   human-driven climate change - and they warn that a much larger area of   
   the United States will become vulnerable to the disease in the decades   
   to come. The fungus thrives in dry soils, rides on plumes of dust and   
   booms after periods of extreme drought - the exact cycles that   
   scientists say have grown more intense and widespread across the   
   American West due to the warming climate.   
      
   While science is not yet able to show a definitive link between the   
   rising case counts and higher temperatures, the connection seems clear   
   to many of the front-line health workers grappling with the disease.   
      
   "I cannot think of any other infection that is so closely entwined with   
   climate change," said Rasha Kuran, an infectious-disease specialist at   
   the University of California at Los Angeles who is one of McIntyre's   
   doctors.   
      
   https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/an-invisible-killer-18491299.php   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)