In Arizona, a Fight Against a Deadly Fungus Is Under Threat From Trump’s Health Policies

Coccidioidomycosis, better known as valley fever, is a nasty disease. It’s caused by the inhalation of fungal spores kicked up from desert dirt—or as Zoya Teirstein writes, “simply by breathing in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Researchers have dedicated their careers to eradicating valley fever, which is especially endemic to Arizona and is becoming more prevalent because of climate change. Now their work is at risk because of the Trump administration’s anti-science policies:

Whether a vaccine for valley fever moves forward matters not only for the hundreds of thousands of Americans who are likely to get the disease in the coming years, but also for the 6.5 million people who get invasive fungal infections annually around the world. As with valley fever, the overall number of fungal infections is growing as climate change makes the whole Earth warmer on average.

“Unlike humans, many pathogenic fungi are thriving as the Earth’s temperature increases,” the authors of a study published last year in the peer-reviewed British medical journal The Lancet wrote. Fungi that cause disease are “quickly adapting to higher temperatures and becoming more virulent and potent.”