A deadly fungus that can infect cats and people is spreading

This doesn’t necessarily work. Some pills taste bad, and the cat will refuse weird-tasting food.

I recommend everyone who has healthy cats to talk to their vet about administering empty capsules. Just so you and the cat get comfortable with the process before you need it.

Kind of like you need to train them from an early age that clipping their nails is fine.

When your cat gets old, they will need to take oral supplements, at the very least. You’re the person they trust the most to give them.

Its not always that easy. For example cerenia tastes very bitter for a cat. My cat will start drooling almost uncontrollably if he tastes it. He has a kidney condition and needs it for the rest of his life. I've tried crushing it, but he will then just ignore the food because of the bitter taste of the pill. Putting it in something like easy-pill will work a couple of times. Until he realizes the disgusting taste he is going to experience when eating the easy-pill. At that point you can't trick him anymore with an easy-pill.

So the only way I can give it to him (without drama) is by putting it deep into his mouth so he never tastes it and immediately swallows it.

A. I have cats that don't go anywhere special that the other cats don't go so that doesn't work unless I supervise. B. It's difficult to make sure they get the entire dose, again unless you supervise. And good luck getting a cat to finish food they've decided they are done with. C. I have cats that are picky enough to ignore any food that has a crushed pill in it. They can always tell. Yes even if I use smelly food. D. Not all medications can be safely crushed. Slowly dissolving in the stomach could be an important aspect of the delivery.

My cat's got a different kind of fungus, not sporotrichosis, but one that gives her sort of a "clown nose". We've been trying to treat it for years now and it always comes back. Every time the treatment takes 4-6 months with itraconazol.

We are lucky that mass epidemics that plagued humans so far didn't affect the brain. Affections like rabies, that require individuals biting each other, and which are the inspirational source of all those zombie fantasies, do not count. That is an attack vector easy to spot and manage. The scary scenario is the one like with this Sporothrix Brasiliensis fungus, which can spread by merely "sneezing out the infectious yeast", and then remaining potent (outside a host) for "up to 10 weeks", plus (the cherry on top) -- "developing the disease three years after" the infection event. Any kind of pandemic is scary by the sheer magnitude of its reach, but one that would affect the brain? That would be another level of scary.

In the opening scene a scientist argues once the ambient temperature of some region is 37°C we'll all get eaten by fungus. It will evolve to live at body temperature.

There are some precedents for this: hibernating bats lower their body temperature to that of a moldy environment, and are getting infected with a fungus which kills 90% of them in some cases [2]. Logic goes that raising the ambient temperature could be the same (with some evolution thrown in) as lowering our body temperature.

Is it credible? No idea, not that kind of scientist.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLNagvJHl3g

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White-nose_syndrome

You mean the video games?

It can be airborne, lives on sanitized surfaces for up to 10 weeks, and may take 3 years for symptoms to appear.

Still, it is more concerning for cats than humans.

I think quoting is fine, but it's surprising coming from a senior adviser at a U.S. Government department.

> “What we have right now is this ginormous ongoing outbreak of Sporothrix brasiliensis in Brazil,” Lockhart, a senior adviser at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

It's a perfectly cromulent word.

I agree even though I use ginormous in normal conversation. In the right context it is fine, I just don't think this is the right context.

I also find it hard to take an article seriously when its volume comparison employs "Olympic-sized swimming pools". I think the fraction of people who have a clear enough mental idea of the dimensions or volume of an Olympic-sized swimming pool is pretty small relative to the articles readership, which I hope they measure realistically under the assumption that the number of readers will always be close to half the number of eyeballs on the page. Otherwise they would be inflating readership and that would be misleading.

The article doesn’t. It quotes a CDC advisor who does.

It probably does a better job of getting the point across to a general readership than if they'd used overly technical domain-specific jargon about quantity of cases and speed of its spread.

Do you live in the American continent? Look at the skin tone of most people you find in the streets. Go to a library and try to find out what was the average skin tone in your region 600 years ago. Compare both.

Thinks have been spreading for quite a while. Migratory species are older than ourselves. Jet stream can carry spores over oceans. World commerce is older than you think. Wars and migratory movements has always been a part of our civilization.

Don't be ominous. Just say things or refrain from posting.

Please name a better alternative, I'm very curious.

What are the alternatives people rather avoid considering?

Not having cats is an option that is not seriously considered.

Dogs are even worse. Make them shit in your own backyard please.

If you are a city dweller please do not keep “pets”, it’s bloody ridiculous, thank you.

A world with cats is a world with billions of dead birds and small mammals.

Without them we will have even more insects.

So this time cats won’t protect us from diseases by killing the carrier, these time they help the carriers

Pets are slaves. Stop trying to own emotions.