Thanks this is super interesting and definitely concerning.
FWIW within the non-EA Global Health Community this has been a topic of conversation for the last 3-4 years. It is potential threat, but still seems like a super low percentage Xish-risk, because...
a) We haven’t actually seen anything terribly dangerous happen yet b) Antifungal medications are there, and if there was a super-dangerous-mass fungal threat I suspect we could make better ones pretty quicksmart. But yes this is far from guaranteed.
As a side note there are already plenty of pathogens we catch from the soil like anthrax and tetanus, as well as worms like hookworm!
The person I spoke to at the party said that he knew somebody who had a fungal infection and was likely to die from it.
I don’t know much about antifungals, but I infer from his comment that we don’t have enough antifungals to cover all of the potential fungal infections.
To my knowledge, there are a few (not actually that many) existing antifungals, but as I commented above, they mostly aren’t very good, and in several deadly fungal infections they are almost pointless.
Also, when a new fungal pathogen comes out, it might be harmless, or it might be big trouble, nobody can predict that. A good example I’ve seen mentioned a few times is Candida Auris (pretty serious and often deadly fungal infection) that emerged in 2009 independently in several regions of the world, pretty much out of nowhere. And the scary thing is that it was drug-resistant from the start! I think researchers aren’t quite sure why it emerged, but it could be related to climate change.
Thanks this is super interesting and definitely concerning.
FWIW within the non-EA Global Health Community this has been a topic of conversation for the last 3-4 years. It is potential threat, but still seems like a super low percentage Xish-risk, because...
a) We haven’t actually seen anything terribly dangerous happen yet
b) Antifungal medications are there, and if there was a super-dangerous-mass fungal threat I suspect we could make better ones pretty quicksmart. But yes this is far from guaranteed.
As a side note there are already plenty of pathogens we catch from the soil like anthrax and tetanus, as well as worms like hookworm!
The person I spoke to at the party said that he knew somebody who had a fungal infection and was likely to die from it.
I don’t know much about antifungals, but I infer from his comment that we don’t have enough antifungals to cover all of the potential fungal infections.
To my knowledge, there are a few (not actually that many) existing antifungals, but as I commented above, they mostly aren’t very good, and in several deadly fungal infections they are almost pointless.
Also, when a new fungal pathogen comes out, it might be harmless, or it might be big trouble, nobody can predict that. A good example I’ve seen mentioned a few times is Candida Auris (pretty serious and often deadly fungal infection) that emerged in 2009 independently in several regions of the world, pretty much out of nowhere. And the scary thing is that it was drug-resistant from the start! I think researchers aren’t quite sure why it emerged, but it could be related to climate change.