Fungi Apocalypse Can Wipe Out Humans, Warns Expert

Have you seen the series The Last Of Us? The series is set twenty years into the pandemic caused by a mass fungal infection, which turns people into zombies. Half of humanity wipes out with time. Arturo Casadevall, a professor of molecular microbiology, immunology and infectious diseases, claimed in an interview that the epidemic shown in The Last Of Us is not a mere fantasy and says that Fungi pose a ‘real threat’ to humanity. The fungal virus is called Cordyceps. People infected by it turn into zombie-like creatures whose bites or fine spores infect humans, turning them into monsters.

Professor Arturo Casadevall warns people of the Fungi Epidemic in his latest book titled What If Fungi Win? It was published last month. “Right now, we don’t know any fungi that can turn a human into a zombie. But there’s no question in my mind that we are likely to see dangerous new fungal pathogens emerge over time. In fact, we’ve already seen it happen,” said Professor Arturo Casadevall.

Casadevall believes that due to climate change, fungi are likely to spread ‘new diseases’ to mankind. He said that there is growing evidence that some fungi have the potential to spread new diseases that will harm humans in an unprecedented way. The fungus or fungal organisms only need to be able to adapt to higher temperatures, he added. Currently, most such organisms cannot survive in temperatures above 37 degrees Celsius. But this limit can be broken, Professor claims.

In his latest book, What If Fungi Win, the professor presented evidence of fungi mutating after the fungus Candida auris was found in the ear of a person in Japan in 2007. It further spread to South America, Africa and India.

“Candida auris was unknown to medicine until 2007 when it was recovered from the ear of an individual in Japan. So we have a medical mystery. We have an organism that medicine didn’t know anything about. One of the things we have proposed is that this may have been the first fungus to breach our thermal barriers,” said Professor Arturo Casadevall. He warns humans of a possible fungal epidemic and says that humanity may not have suffered this disease but many other species have been through the same.