Valley Fever Is Spreading Through a Hotter, Drier Western US | Hacker News Reader

Valley Fever Is Spreading Through a Hotter, Drier Western US

wired.com

20 pointssmoyer8 comments

Our dog caught Valley Fever on a road trip through the southwest. It was just dumb luck that our vet originally practiced in Arizona and was familiar with this fungal infection. The only symptom was a mild cough, but left unchecked the fungus spreads throughout the body and can do quite a bit of damage.

According to CDC data, reported valley fever cases in the US increased by 32 percent between 2016 and 2018. One study determined that cases in California rose 800 percent between 2000 and 2018.

When I read such figures, I often wonder if it's because the number of cases has increased or because diagnostics / education of doctors have improved. According to the article, the first doctor didn't grasp what the boy had. He had to go and see a specialist to be correctly diagnosed.

Here we go again: another article blaming climate change and not poor wildfire management.

Why not both?

Most of the article is about how climate change is expanding the territory of the disease,

trying to blame wildfire management is a massive stretch as the only proven way fires lead to it is when firefighters dig up soil to make fire lines, and the article cited 1 out of the 4,000 firefighters got it in the wild fire that that person digging through their house ruins got it.

The article clearly paints the picture of Climate change being the cause of the increase

Thanks! I skimmed the article and it seemed to make the somewhat bizarre claim that the disease is correlated with the fires. On a more careful reading they were setting up the fire argument and I missed the punch line. I can't stand the 'let's throw in a bunch of personal narratives and turn a 3 paragraphs story into a 7 pages mini-novel' journalistic style.

The article is pretty clear on the fact that the link between wild fire and valley fever is not shown in research, and that wilderness fire fighters get the fever due to digging up soil (a proven vector that also means construction workers often get the virus) to make fire lines, rather than from smoke.

And most of the article is talking about the climate conditions valley fever needs to thrive, and how the areas meeting those conditions are expanding with climate change,

Oh but let’s blame poor wild fire management because it’s trendy.

When we have our generation's dust bowl, this will make it worse.

https://www.agriculture.com/weather/news/dust-bowl-coming-in...

https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/09/weather/hottest-summer-on-rec...

https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2015/01/avoiding-a-second...

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