Valley Fever Kills
By: Janice Arenofsky
Tags: Arizona, Vaccines, Nih, Coccidioidomycosis, Valley Fever

Health

Valley Fever Kills

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I’ve been an activist fighting against Valley Fever for at least 20 years and the executive director of the Phoenix-based non-profit Arizona Victims of Valley Fever for around 10 years (www.arizonavictimsofvalleyfever.org). In all this time I have yet to see the Arizona Legislature appropriate any monies in their budget for research on a cure for Valley Fever.

You may wonder why I’m all fired up about this. It’s simple. Valley Fever (also known in scientific circles as coccidioidomycosis) is a killer, with nearly 75 percent of all cases in the country occurring in Arizona. The rest of the cases infect people in California and other areas of the Southwest where the fungus becomes airborne through construction or even simple gardening.

Clearly Arizona needs a vaccine and a curative antifungal agent, but as yet they do not exist even though the disease has been known for more than 70 years and is worsening and spreading due to climate change.

Valley Fever may sound inocuous, but it is far from that. It can be life-threatening with symptoms that have been compared to that of COVID. It’s a fungus that infects the body through normal breathing of tiny dust particles in the air. It’s not preventable even if you wore a N95 mask 24/7. Its one saving grace is that although it’s infectious, it is not contagious.

More than 200,000 people get infected by this fungus every year, and that’s a low estimate. Some of them die. Others fight off the disease but wind up with severely compromised organs and a weak debilitated body that gives them a poor quality of life. And the fungus doesn’t just attack people; pets and zoo animals are even more susceptible than humans, and they die at a higher rate. The enormity of veterinary and human costs has been analyzed and described by the Valley Fever Center for Excellence at the University of Arizona in Tucson where Director John Galgiani, MD, works with others to fund a vaccine.(www.vfce.arizona.edu)

Fact: Although most Valley Fever cases happen in Arizona, the state appropriates zero monies in its annual budget to research and development of a vaccine and/or curative antifungal agent. (I have to repeat this fact because even after living here some 40 years I can’t believe that a state that covets tourism as much as Arizona does chooses to shirk its public health responsibility.)

Morally and ethically what Arizona politicians do is unconscionable. They invite tourists to come and spend lots of money in Arizona but throw a blind eye toward the health dangers of Valley Fever. The only politician who has ever taken Valley Fever seriously from a monetary perspective is Janet Napolitano, a Democratic former governor. Naturally the mostly Republican legislature redlined it from the budget, and since then has not taken up the cause.

Why has the Arizona legislature taken this dim, amoral view? I believe legislators are waiting for the federal government to come up with millions of dollars to finance a vaccine. In fact, the idea has been thrown around Washington, DC, with no less than Dr. Fauci of COVID fame. Perhaps he knows the sad history of Arizona’s disregard for the health of its population and tourists and is taking pity on the state for having politicians who lack the ability to prioritize and the initiative to carve out a practical pathway.

Like many people, Arizona legislators figure if they can get federal monies for a vaccine, this lets them off the hook. The Legislature denies that the state is in any way responsible for people getting sick from Valley Fever and dying — despite clear evidence to the contrary. Legislators disallow any litigation involving persons suing for damages and workman’s compensation from the disease. Naturally prisoners, who get sick in higher numbers than the general population, also are prevented from suing the state.

While California has some of the same problems, at least their legislature assumes the moral burden of appropriating monies toward the eradication of Valley Fever. The greater question is why does Arizona — with a far higher incidence — sit and wait while its tourists and residents die of Valley Fever?

When three-fourths of the diagnosed cases occur in Arizona, you might think that the state might try to clean up its own mess. To put it in more realistic or everyday terms, if someone served food that sickened their party guests, the hosts probably would at the very least offer health remedies such as an emergency trip to the hospital and palliative medications. You would not think highly of hosts who did nothing but shoo their guests out the door with only an apology.

But that’s what Arizona does to all the people who live, work, visit and travel here when in the daily pursuit of their lives, they are infected with Valley Fever. The local Chambers of Commerce and even the Arizona Department of Health Services downplay the disease, often times hiding its very existence from newcomers. Basically they go with caveat emptor — come to Arizona at your own risk. Of course if you’re ignorant of the risk or don’t take it seriously, you get stung, which has been the case for many national athletes, most recently baseball player Ike Davis, who lost his career to Valley Fever and many a whole lot more.

Forty years ago I was one of those newcomers to Arizona. I was never told of the dire effects of this disease. It was described as no more than a passing flu. And to many fortunate people, that’s all it is. Just as COVID often causes only minor symptoms in some people. But as we all found out about COVID, this disease can kill, and we now have more than 320,000 who could attest to this fact if they were still alive to do it. Luckily and with great expenditures of federal and private dollars, we now have vaccines that in time will wipe out this dread global disease.

I don’t know what the current mortality numbers are for Valley Fever, but they are, thankfully, far less than COVID. Yet if I’d know what was in store for me and my pets, I would not have relocated to Arizona. And this is true for many residents. Too little information, too late.

Arizona is playing Russian Roulette. Will the feds pay for a vaccine, or will Arizona shoulder the responsibility? And how many more years will it take to reach a decision?

We take guns away from children and mentally-deranged people, don’t we? Why then do we allow Arizona to continue to abdicate its responsibility?