On March 20, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published a press release about concerns related to an “emerging fungus considered an urgent antimicrobial resistance threat” called Candida auris (C. auris).

The press release contains data from 2020 and 2021 about the spread of the fungus which was first found in the U.S. in 2016. The fungus is primarily being spread in hospitals, where understaffing could be contributing to this issue, Kaitlin Fisher, an assistant professor of microbiology at SUNY Oswego, said.

There were “3,270 clinical cases (in which infection is present) and 7,413 screening cases (in which the fungus is detected but not causing infection) reported through December 31, 2021,” according to a CDC press release. Screening cases tripled between 2020 and 2021.

Through Dec. 31, 2022, New York State has had 326 clinical cases, according to the CDC’s case tracker.

Though C. auris is not an entirely new fungus, the press release discussing it, including data about infection numbers, coincided with the release of the first season of the HBO series “The Last of Us,” which ran from Jan. 15 to March 12 and discusses fungi.

The show was released to high critical acclaim, with a Rotten Tomatoes critic score of 96% and an abundance of discussion on social media. “The Last of Us” follows “a rapidly spreading pandemic—in which a mutated Cordyceps fungus morphs people into zombie-like ‘infected,’” according to the Yale School of Medicine.

Jennifer Fogel, an associate professor in the communication studies department at SUNY Oswego, said she thinks the release of the report was a coincidence, “but I think it being covered by major news outlets is not coincidental, that that is all about the fact that people are curious. … Unless you’re a fan [of The Last of Us], I think that it probably went right over your head; you didn’t even notice the story.”

She described that after the release of the movies “2012” and “The Day After Tomorrow,” climate change became a topic of conversation and news coverage and that this type of news coverage following popular media has happened.

“I would never rule out something like [the disaster in ‘The Last of Us’] happening,” said Katherine Speed, a senior and communications major at SUNY Oswego who enjoyed watching the show. “… If we were to go through something like that, I think it could very much look like that [in terms of human reaction.]”

“When something becomes really popular in the popular culture … I think that that will encourage reporters to follow up on some stories that might not have been on their radar to begin with,” Fogel said.

Speed said that when she is interested in a piece of popular media, she feels that she is more inclined to read news about the topics it discusses.

The fungus in the series is based on Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, which is “a real fungus that parasitizes the brains of insects like ants or spiders,” according to Yale.

“There probably won’t emerge some fungi that can all of a sudden control our behavior,” Fisher said. “Now, could there emerge some fungus that is just fantastic at pathogenizing and colonizing us and that we can’t treat with any drugs and that becomes a major driver of mortality? Yeah, that’s totally possible.” She said that drug resistance and climate change are two of the potential causes for this possibility.

Fungi are a different entity than viruses or bacteria, Fisher said. Viruses are not cellular organisms and so they are not typically considered to be alive. Bacteria are single-celled organisms. Fungi are “closely related to animals,” and function much like human cells, making them “difficult to target with drugs,” according to Fisher.

C. auris is also listed on the World Health Organization’s fungal priority pathogens list as a part of the critical priority group.

“In general, the fungal kingdom is sort of misunderstood and that’s not just among the general public, that’s among biologists too, because mycology, or the study of fungi, is one of the least funded and least taught sciences in biology,” Fisher said. She added that fungal infections have also not affected our lives to the same extent that viruses and bacteria have.

“I didn’t think anything about fungus, I eat mushrooms, that’s about it,” Fogel said. She later added, “I think [popular media] certainly raises the conscious level, like these issues that people were not necessarily thinking of before, and suddenly their favorite character on their TV show is having to go through these issues.”

C. auris is “naturally multi-drug resistant, which means there are isolates of C. auris that are resistant to every single antifungal compound that we can throw at them,” Fisher said. She added that antifungal medications often target fungal cell walls, because the rest of their cellular structures are quite similar to human cells.  Through the use of fungicides in agriculture, more and more fungi are selectively becoming drug resistant, she explained. Later, she added, “we need new antifungal drugs; we need them desperately.”

“If we don’t collectively do something [about climate change] as a society in the next few years, we are dooming our generation and our children’s generation to a pretty unstable and pretty scary place,” Fisher said.

“There’s a really good possibility that within our lifetimes, we’re going to live in a world where we’re returning to sort of the pre-antibiotic era, where people are dying of infections that would have been easily cleared up fifty years prior, but now the pathogens are resistant to every drug we have,” Fisher described. “It’s a very, very, very real possibility and I think that the public needs to be more aware of that.”

Image from @TheLastOfUsHBO via Twitter