The first episode of The Last of Us is designed to horrify. A marauding fungus infects humans, who infect other humans, turning a quiet suburb into a zombieland. Get past that first episode and it’s never as gruesome. It doesn’t need to be. The idea that this invasive fungus is out there haunts viewers as effectively as it does the key players in this post-apocalyptic game-based show (starring the engaging Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey).
In our jumpy post-pandemic, climate-crisis world, it’s natural for the viewer to wonder, could this really happen? The most likely answer, is no. Here’s why.
The fungus wreaking all the havoc in The Last of Us is a variant of the cordyceps. The most virulent of these fungi do inhabit their hosts and eat them alive, severing the brain’s link with the body and then using that body to move around and infect others. It does this with certain species of ant. It can’t infect all ants. It hasn’t even been able to migrate from one group of insect species to another, let alone break out of the insect world.
What climate change could do, when it comes to fungi and humans, is make fungal infections more widespread, researchers such as Scott Roberts, MD and assistant professor of medicine (infectious diseases) at Yale School of Medicine, have said in interviews. The human body has evolved to fight fungal spores; we breathe in many on a regular basis and they generally do no harm.
The cordyceps in particular is not designed to infect humans. The fungal varieties that are, include the Aspergillus, Histoplasma, Blastomyces and Coccidioides. They can cause symptoms in the immuno-compromised, but even these are treatable with anti-fungals.
Some ’shrooms do have mind-altering effects on the human brain, if ingested. These symptoms are mild and temporary and have nothing in common with what the Ophiocordyceps unilateralis does to the ant.
The thing to watch out for, especially for the immuno-compromised: The overuse of antibiotics. They wipe out good bacteria in the human body, and can make it easier for a human to contract a fungal infection. So there you have it: put the cordyceps out of your mind, but don’t pop that pill unless you have to.
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