Meet Candida

This is my first time seeing Brood X come out and play.

In 1970 I was in North Carolina and it wasn’t happening down there. In 1987 I was in Texas. In 2004 I was in North Carolina again. Now, in 2021, I’m getting a first.

And it’s a plague.

You should hear them. It’s loud. Day and night they drone on in the distance, so numerous that there’s little deviation and just a constant tone unless the swarms move, which seems to be a group activity since the cicadas are so keen to mate. But there’s that fungus waiting to eat their genitals away and provide some coitus interruptus. Even bugs are in danger from fungi.

Because COVID-19 is not over, I disagree with the casual attitudes of some people. Hosting parties was never anything that stopped, but the light is green now for small ones and the honor system is the method by which all behaviour is now kept to “safe” levels. That’s going to be effective. Sure it will. Sure it will.

With people out and about, unmasked, I’m not sure what to think about the threats we face. Just how serious is our situation, and what measures can we take, and what weapons are available to us?

Candida auris. It began to show up in patients who had COVID-19 in 2020. A yeast fungus, the spores can invade through a minor cut, by inhalation and perhaps more. So far it has a one third mortality rate in hospitalized patients. It seems to attack, through blood, the kidneys and liver and has probably made pneumonia in covid patients worse.

Empowered by our poor judgement in the use of antibiotics and antifungal medicines, it has grown resistant and threatens immunosuppressed patients on treatments for other conditions including CoV-2. It can take advantage of rheumatoid arthritis patients and others and that’s about all I know. Except  for the fact that it won’t be magically disappearing. It’s a true and legitimate threat.

It is our next plague, not animal nor plant, but alive and deadly all the same.

On first observation in the covid pandemic, scientists were highly alarmed at C. auris. We know why, don’t we? Because we’ve been exposed to it and other fungi all our lives. Everything from mold and mildew are old familiar foes, same as with athlete’s foot and jock itch to yeast infections. Nobody likes them and nobody thinks they’re funny.

Well…maybe I’ve had a joke or two. I am, after all, an asshole. One day a man in a Corvette convertible was next to me at a red light. He looked as smug and pretty as the typical ‘Vette driver usually is. I simply looked at him. I turned my head, which made him look at me. Deadpan, I said, “I have jock itch.”

I pulled off when the light was green and he fell behind. I smiled, knowing I had perhaps ruined his day. He was uncomfortable; his eyes had bulged. His face showed that he was not thrilled with my cross-lane declaration. And I so loved shocking people. He probably never forgot it.

But Candida auris is not jock itch. No situation can accommodate a joke about it.

To make it into the human body a fungus must be able to withstand body temperature. Most had trouble doing that for a long time but not now. Because of global warming, all kinds of pests have adapted to warm temperatures and have been observed alive and well in the bloodstream.

Things I’ve never seen or been much aware of in my lifetime are now in the spotlight. We are not in a very good position.

We’ve all been careless, inattentive and shortsighted. When that finally comes to haunt us, really haunt us, we will lament, and yet still point the finger at others in accusation.

Candida. It’s been around and we naturally have close relationships with it. What changed, that now it kills immunosuppressed people? I need to do some research, but in starting to do so, have found only ads in the guise of “documentaries”. God, are we really gullible and stupid enough not to see what liars and the hawkers of “remedies” are filling us with?

Candida isn’t new. It’s just that during the early days of COVID-19, doctors noticed that immune system depression facilitated it. And that it killed.

It was commonplace, a nuisance. Now, a known threat.

How ironic, at least to me. In 1970, the first year I missed Brood X, Candida meant nothing until this song was released:

Brood X is loud. Having never seen this, I’m amazed, you should be here, you should see them falling off me when I’ve come in after smoking for five minutes. And you should hear this.

My apologies to friends in African countries, the Indus, Australia and Southeast Asian countries, because you put up with much worse. Forgive me. You’re tougher, wiser and have nerves of steel compared to most of us Yanks.