The ever-rising use of anti-fungicides on crops is driving the evolution of fungi capable of resisting all known drugs. Candida auris, a variant that is spreading rapidly in various parts of the world, is estimated to kill ten million people by the year 2050.
Here, the New York Times describes an outbreak in April, 2019:
“hospital workers used a special device to spray aerosolized hydrogen peroxide around a room used for a patient with C. auris, the theory being that the vapor would scour each nook and cranny. They left the device going for a week. Then they put a “settle plate” in the middle of the room with a gel at the bottom that would serve as a place for any surviving microbes to grow, Dr. Rhodes said. Only one organism grew back. C. auris.
It was spreading, but word of it was not. The hospital, a specialty lung and heart center that draws wealthy patients from the Middle East and around Europe, alerted the British government and told infected patients, but made no public announcement.
“There was no need to put out a news release during the outbreak,” said Oliver Wilkinson, a spokesman for the hospital.
This hushed panic is playing out in hospitals around the world. Individual institutions and national, state and local governments have been reluctant to publicize outbreaks of resistant infections, arguing there is no point in scaring patients — or prospective ones.”
So it’s spreading rapidly in many parts of the globe, and nobody wants to talk about it.
We’re all aware that Armageddon may be just around the corner, but we don’t know where to look, and even if we were looking the in the right direction, we may not see it. If there is a nuclear exchange between warring countries, or even a “dirty bomb” attack, spreading radioactivity from a conventional explosive encased by anything from radioactive waste to pure plutonium, most of us will not directly witness this event. Those who do will probably not be around to talk about it. We all will, however, feel the effects for years afterwards.
Even so, most disasters are harder to directly observe than one would assume. Most of us first witness a flood via a “road closed” sign and a policeman waving his torch to tell us to keep moving. Our first sign of a global catastrophe might be the ATM not working. The Internet might be down, or dramatically slow. Our cellphones might not work. Hours later, we might begin to hear rumors and then official announcements, explaining what happened and what we were supposed to do in response.
I was in Argentina when the currency suddenly devalued in 2001. Without warning (except that the higher-ups in government had advanced notice to send their savings abroad) bank accounts that had been equally denominated in dollars and pesos were now only available in pesos. Within a few months, the peso was devalued by four hundred percent. Withdrawals at banks were limited to twenty dollars per day, then ten, then five. The government declared a “bank holiday” to announce all this. Beware of sudden government-announced holidays.
If there is a enormous plague outbreak, or a nuclear war, you can bet the first thing that will happen is travel will become restricted. You will need official permission to go most places. Visa-on-arrival will disappear. Currency withdrawals will be closely monitored and limited.
In an attempt to quell panic, these changes will be announced as “temporary” but will soon prove to be permanent. After the Patriot Act became law following the World Trade Center attacks of September 11, 2001, many freedoms we took for granted were suspended and then eliminated. Most of us didn’t notice.
The fact most of us are reluctant to consider is that there’s a good chance at sometime in our lifetimes we’re going to face a catastrophe, and the governmental sources which we depend upon will fail us. If they are able to do anything at all they will, as happened in Argentina, take care of their own first.