BD or Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis is a fungal infection that has been wiping out amphibians across the globe.

C Auris is a fungal infection in humans. It was first identified by doctors as an ear infection in an Asian patient in 2009.

~

"In 2003, refusing to discuss information about SARS allowed the illness to spread around the world. Are we allowing the same thing to happen with C. auris?"

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2019-07-16/commentary-with-candida-auris-worry-about-transparency-not-infection 

"The Worst Disease Ever Recorded / A doomsday fungus known as Bd has condemned more species to extinction than any other pathogen."

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/03/bd-frogs-apocalypse-disease/585862/ 

~

Should you know about C auris?

Candida Auris is a fungal infection first described as the pathogen involved in an ear infection in Japan in 2009. It was later found to have been in a sample from Korea in the 1990s.

Since then at least four, and probably five, genetically distinct strains of C auris have mysteriously appeared around the globe.

At first there was a strong effort to alert the public.

But in 2019 a study showed that C auris is shed in the skin of some patients.

http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2019/06/study-colonized-candida-auris-patients-shed-fungus-skin 

The shed skin contains fungus and potentially transmits C auris to those who come in contact with it. A small amount of the fungus on a surface can be dangerous for three months if the surface isn't cleaned.

After that study, the C auris news stream went largely dark.

There are still occasional scientific articles, but if you Google "Candida Auris" you will find very few recent articles.

All of the evidence points to C auris evolving rapidly in several countries where it is beginning to replace other fungi that are more treatable. 

Because it is difficult to identify C auris, most likely many people were treated with medication for a different, visible, fungal infection until it disappeared, leaving C auris with acquired immunity to that treatment.

In many poor countries it is not practical at this point to treat C auris. Thus, those countries are reservoirs for infection in other countries. 

Worse, because of its resistance to treatment as well as the way it is spread, it is the perfect budget bioweapon for any small 'terrorist' group with a limited budget.

You might not see a lot of articles about C auris, but it probably will be indirectly making headlines until an even more dangerous pathogen emerges.

~

One of the paradoxes of 'science' is that the broader it seems to be, the narrower it actually is.

A long time ago, people dispersed around the globe, bringing and developing medical systems that were unique.

In modern times 'western medicine', from Europe, has spread across the globe and displaced many other systems. As a 'melting pot function' it pretends to be inclusive and an extension of local science, wherever it goes. In other words its public side is that it is strictly evidence based and derived from logic that is universal, available to anybody.

That 'inclusiveness' though is not what it appears to be. Instead of including foreign systems in a balanced conglomerate, western medicine has been eliminating its competition, trying to gain a monopoly on what passes as valid science. At first western sciences prevailed because Europeans had the best guns. Then money was the edge. Then political influence etc.

This page won't deal with that broad problem, but will only look at

a) how it makes untreatable new diseases inevitable,

b) why isolated indigenous economies are urgent, and

c) A solution.

~

In late 2019 a sort of trade war developed between China and the U.S.

At first it looked like a regular tariff war. Trump played the offended victim convincingly. But gradually it began to seem that strictly economic issues were secondary. Eventually it became evident that the negotiations were not adversarial, but rather both sides were using a supposed trade war as a context in which to separate the two economies.

As the tariff war developed, it looked less and less like regulators would succeed. Finally the process collapsed in failure. The two governments announced 'success', which in governmentspeak means 'failure', and a few weeks later articles began appearing about Coronavirus.

When Coronavirus first appeared, some people pointed out that there had been global military sports competition in Wuhan, involving a large number of soldiers from many countries, which ended just two weeks before the virus began appearing in that city.

Another popular observation was that China has only one top security biolab that handles dangerous pathogens including viruses, and that biolab is in Wuhan.

And "The March shipment took place during a dispute between the US and China, which led to the arrest of an executive of Huawei Technologies and the later detainment of two Canadians in China, according to the Winnipeg Free Press."

https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/questions-surround-canadian-shipment-of-deadly-viruses-to-china-66254

These competing narratives won't be examined on this page, but there are many important details relevant to this page, and it might make an interesting second page.

~

CoronaVirus, like any disease, is treated in different ways depending where you are, who you are, what resources you have, etc.

Western medicine revolves around the notion of a uniform patient. Medicine is dispensed according to an algorithm.

Traditional Chinese Medicine for example, though, is more tailored to the specific circumstances of the patient, more 'wholistic'.

With respect to viral diseases like Coronavirus, western medicine looks for one drug that can cure all Coronavirus patients. Traditional Chinese Medicine looks first at the manifestation of the illness in a specific individual, then tailors treatment.

These two medical systems have overlapped for many generations and have become more and more similar, but there are other systems which are totally different.

in a perfectly homogenous tribal society paradigms arise, and are modified to explain anything that appears.

In a melting pot there is a necessity to sacrifice bigger and bigger segments of the population i.e., those with remnants of something that is beyond the microcosm in which melting pots exist.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5038112/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5811176/

https://www.mayoclinic.org/morgellons-disease/art-20044996

In that case, Morgellons disease, there is an obvious syndrome that is limited to a certain group of people. Melting pot scientists first look for a way that it can be usefully made to support their profession or worldview.

Not finding that, they retreat to diplomacy.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture-bound_syndrome

~

Fungi are much different from other 'combined' life forms like animals.

Most people have the experience of watching a fungus or mold grow on a fruit or vegetable.

Some people consume drinks and food made with fungi or a combination of fungi with other organisms, such as kombucha which is a 'scoby', a symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCOBY

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kombucha

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_of_vinegar

In the case of kombucha there is a 'low level' relationship between the two organisms and a higher level relationship.

At the lower level the two microbes are symbiotes that create an ecosystem. Waste from one microbe is food for the other.

At a higher level they are 'one organism', a primitive animal, and form a 'mushroom' whose diameter expands to match its container. The mushroom reproduces by forming baby mushrooms underneath which can be peeled off and placed in a new environment.

The evolution of a ‘noncombined' organism, like fungi, is much quicker than that of the 'combined' organisms they create as symbiotic colonies, due to various tools noncombined organisms have for acquiring information.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizontal_gene_transfer 

Humans and kombucha, likewise, are symbiotic.

A person will propagate kombucha, grow it in a bowl with fruit juice, give the baby mushrooms to other people etc. and kombucha drank as a beverage will colonize the gut with those beneficial microbes.

"Some amphibian species appear to have an innate capacity to withstand chytridiomycosis infection due to symbiosis with Janthinobacterium lividum."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batrachochytrium_dendrobatidis

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janthinobacterium_lividum

C Auris emerged in numerous locations about the same time, in genetically diverse forms. It wasn't 'one C Auris' that suddenly appeared in numerous locations, rather it was C Auris in numerous forms that suddenly appeared.

Sort of like if you put a piece of bread on a table in one place, and another piece of bread on a table in another place hundreds of miles away, and you specifically let it sit to cultivate mold.

The mold will arise spontaneously in both, with no obvious relationship between the two colonies. In other words there is a pre existing base population of this organism throughout the environment which has evolved to serve a specific niche.

With C auris there were already several base populations when it was 'discovered', implying it either developed on its own, or was developed with help i.e., cultivated.

~In Progress

 

BD 

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/fungal-disease-linked-decline-500-amphibian-species-worlds-deadliest-pathogen-180971831/ 

https://www.sciencealert.com/deadly-frog-pathogen-is-the-most-destructive-disease-ever-decimating-501-species 

https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2018/may/deadly-disease-thats-killing-amphibians.html 

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/03/bd-frogs-apocalypse-disease/585862/ 

~

C Auris

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2019-07-16/commentary-with-candida-auris-worry-about-transparency-not-infection 

https://www.medicinenet.com/candida_auris_c_auris/article.htm 

https://www.healio.com/infectious-disease/emerging-diseases/news/print/infectious-disease-news/%7B58d0639e-3d64-4b80-b629-d55bc2b4a0c5%7D/c-auris-endures-raising-questions-about-surveillance-reporting 

https://jcm.asm.org/content/58/4/e01345-19 

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/06/health/drug-resistant-candida-auris.html 

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2752927 

http://www.longbeach.gov/health/diseases-and-condition/resources-for-providers/candida-auris/ 

http://www.longbeach.gov/globalassets/health/media-library/documents/diseases-and-condition/resources-for-providers/candida-auris/lb-health-c--auris-info-sesstion-8-7-19 

https://www.insider.com/what-is-candida-auris-deadly-fungal-infection-2019-4 

https://www.news-medical.net/health/Candida-auris-(C-auris)-Everything-You-Need-to-Know.aspx 

https://www.cnn.com/2017/05/18/health/c-auris-superbug-cdc-study/index.html 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candida_auris 

https  www.  health.  harvard.  edu/blog/candida-auris-the-latest-deadly-superbug-and-why-its-not-time-to-panic-2019050816606 **link gone**

http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2019/06/study-colonized-candida-auris-patients-shed-fungus-skin 

https://www.statnews.com/2019/07/23/the-superbug-candida-auris-is-giving-rise-to-warnings-and-big-questions/ 

https://www.cdc.gov/fungal/candida-auris/candida-auris-qanda.html

 

 

https://sciencetrends.com/substrates-lichens-grow-appear-act-reservoir-lichen-photobionts/

 

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Anna_Voytsekhovich/publication/259752117_Lichen_photobionts_the_origin_diversity_and_relationships_with_mycobiont/links/0deec52d91b49c510c000000/Lichen-photobionts-the-origin-diversity-and-relationships-with-mycobiont.pdf