The Human Limit

A flesh-eating fungus is thriving in a hotter, drier West

AN INVISIBLE KILLER

By Joshua Partlow, Veronica Penney and Carolyn Van Houten

Joshua Partlow and Carolyn Van Houten traveled through California, Oregon and Washington to track Valley fever’s spread. Veronica Penney, in Denver, visualized data on how the disease could widen its reach as the planet warms.

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Published Nov. 13 at 6:00 a.m.
BAKERSFIELD, Calif.

At some point, Erik McIntyre inhaled the fungal spores. He couldn’t see them, or feel them, and it was weeks before he began to lose energy, to drop weight, to cough up blood at a karaoke bar in Arizona.

Now that he’s paralyzed from Valley fever, in a nursing home at age 53, the former U.S. Navy electrician’s day begins at 5 a.m. with a rectal tube procedure to release gas trapped in his stomach. The antifungal injections that left him retching and shaking are less frequent now, and the lesions where the fungus grew on his face and arms have faded to scars. But he knows he will never be cured, or probably walk again.

“I try not to dwell on what could have been,” he said. ... McIntyre can imagine the moment he encountered those microscopic spores. He remembers driving across dusty Phoenix suburbs with his windows down. But he can’t be sure.

These days, the fungus could be anywhere.

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Magda Jean-Louis contributed to this report.

About this story
Design and development by Hailey Haymond and Emily Sabens. Additional development by Yutao Chen. Editing by Katie Zezima, Olivier Laurent, Monica Ulmanu, Juliet Eilperin, Joe Moore, Emily Morman, Phil Lueck and Jay Wang.

Sources

Maps of areas in the United States that will probably reach the temperature and precipitation thresholds favorable to the spread of coccidioides are based on the methodology from “Expansion of Coccidioidomycosis Endemic Regions in the United States in Response to Climate Change” by Gorris et al. We used LOCA2 data provided by David W. Pierce at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. The climate scenario shown is SSP245, which is comparable to the RCP4.5 warming scenario used in the original paper. Estimates of the expanded number of Valley fever cases use data published in the same study. Data on the number of Valley fever cases in California following droughts is from a 2022 study by Head et. al.

By Joshua Partlow
Joshua Partlow is a reporter on the The Washington Post’s national desk. He has served previously as the bureau chief in Mexico City, Kabul, Rio de Janeiro, and as a correspondent in Baghdad. Twitter https://twitter.com/partlowj

By Veronica Penney
Veronica Penney is a climate graphics reporter at The Washington Post. She previously worked as a data reporter on Colorado Public Radio's investigative team and covered climate change as a reporting fellow at the New York Times. Twitter https://twitter.com/veronica-penney

By Carolyn Van Houten
Carolyn Van Houten is a staff photojournalist at the Washington Post. She was a recipient of the Overseas Press Club's Robert Capa Gold Medal, RFK Human Rights Award, and was named one of Forbes 30 Under 30 in Media. She was on the team that won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting. Twitter https://twitter.com/vanhoutenphoto