Like a nightmarish, post-apocalyptic plot, rising temperatures are causing fungi to mutate in ways that not only make them hyper-infectious but drug-resistant, too.

Like a nightmarish, post-apocalyptic plot, rising temperatures are causing fungi to mutate in ways that not only make them hyper-infectious but drug-resistant, too.

This is deeply concerning as our world warms, Nanjing Medical University researcher Jingjing Huang and colleagues warn.

“The danger and importance of new fungal pathogens is believed to be seriously underestimated,” they write in their new paper.

“Temperature-dependent mutagenesis can enable the development of pan-drug resistance and hypervirulence in fungi, and support the idea that global warming can promote the evolution of new fungal pathogens.”

  • loathesome dongeaterAEnglish
    11·
    3 days ago

    I guess this is another path climate catastrophe can take. Before the “natural” disasters arising from increased temperatures, some weird pathogen obliterate us instead.

    • Ocommie63 [she/her]
      10·
      3 days ago

      If smallpox, the black death, the white death, or any other plague couldn’t make us extinct then I don’t see how a new plague would make us extinct either.

      • ComradeSalad
        9·
        3 days ago

        Society is much more integrated then it was in those times. If 30% of the worlds population died today in a similar way to what happened during the Black Death there would be a massive chance that most countries would simply collapse, or see mass famine, essential goods shortages, medicine shortages, and so on.

        It wouldn’t drive us extinct, but civil collapse would be a bleak and miserable existence.

          • ComradeSalad
            6·
            3 days ago

            True, but billions would still die and we would probably be set back decades, if not centuries.

          • ComradeSalad
            3·
            3 days ago

            At that point isolated anarchist communes would be more likely then anything. There really wouldn’t be much of society left to make communist.

            When society starts to rebuild I can definitely see it coming back as communist however.

            Or the dolphins can start their Revolution. Either or.

      • loathesome dongeaterAEnglish
        7·
        3 days ago

        This time epidemics have a new ally. The capitalist parasitic overlords who will throw us in a cesspool of diseases for a dime.

        • Ocommie63 [she/her]
          10·
          3 days ago

          So did the black death with the feudal lords, and all the uncleanly nature of cities that they allowed

        • redtea
          4·
          3 days ago

          I look forward to our new fungal overlords replacing our capitalist parasite overlords.