The Last of Us Proposes a Pandemic Based on Fungal Infection — Could that Happen?

Getty; HBO

CNN's medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta weighed in Tuesday morning on the theory that cordyceps fungi would be able to infect humans, as shown in the video game and show The Last of Us.

In the popular HBO Max show, the human population has been devastated by a parasitic fungal infection from a strain of cordyceps, causing humans to lose control over their minds and bodies, becoming "zombie-like" shells of their former selves.

The fungi in this premise is real, and does affect some creatures like ants — making them hosts for the fungi to control. The fungi was documented in the 2019 Hostile Planet documentary on National Geographic and followed the process of the spores affecting its ant victims, controlling them and making them a host to produce more fungal spores.

However, Gupta assured viewers on CNN that while the cordyceps fungi can take over ants, it isn't a threat to humans. He said humans' high body temperatures are too warm for the fungus to thrive in, though he noted that fungi are starting to adapt to warmer temperatures due to climate change.

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Other experts also agree, including Matthew Fisher, Ph.D., a professor of fungal disease epidemiology at the Imperial College School of Public Health. He told ABC News that while fungus can cause hallucinations in people, "a human manipulating cordyceps is vanishingly unlikely."

There are at least 150,000 known species of fungi, and only about 200 of them infect humans. There are also thousands of species of cordyceps, and each one infects a particular species of insect. There are no known cordyceps that affect humans, due to the advanced human immune system.

Gupta put a spotlight instead on the rise of deaths from known fungal infections that do affect humans, especially those who are immunocompromised.

A study by researchers released on National Library of Medicine noted that there are 150 million severe cases of fungal infections that occur worldwide each year, resulting in approximately 1.7 million deaths. They also found that while millions of people get skin and nail fungal infections annually, people with underlying health problems such as cancer, asthma or HIV or AIDS or organ transplant recipients often face more serious fungal infections.

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According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention there were an estimated 7,199 people who died from a fungal infection in 2021. Their data from hospitalizations in 2014 show that aspergillosis is the fungal infection that sends the most people to the hospital followed by non-invasive and invasive candidiasis, or a yeast infection, and Pneumocystis pneumonia.

While the CDC hasn't listed these fungal infections or the ones caused by the cordyceps fungi as a threat, it is keeping an eye on certain fungal diseases like candida auris, which the CDC has noted could pose a "serious global health threat" due to its multidrug-resistant properties and difficulties identifying it in a lab.

So far the World Health Organization has identified 19 fungal pathogens that could pose a health threat globally in a recent report released on October, 2022.