Extreme germ phobia

Chapter 137 Source
Ou Yang felt horrified, and a voice in his heart roared: Spores, it must be spores!

"Is this the source of the epidemic?" Zhu Yiming was a little dazed. "It's still active after more than 10,000 years. Isn't that too exaggerated?"

"It's possible that the environment in the cave is particularly suitable for fungal dormancy," Ou Yang said. "Another possibility is that this fungus, like tardigrades, is extremely tenacious."

At this moment, he felt an indescribable and complicated feeling in his heart.

Jiang Yuwei blinked her eyes curiously and wanted to ask what tardigrades were, but seeing that everyone else looked like they knew everything, she suppressed her doubts.

Ma Zhiyuan pointed out the key point: "How long it hibernates is not important. The key is that bat... can the fungus infect animals?"

Everyone looked at me and I looked at you, feeling a chill in my heart.

Everyone shudders at the thought of various animals madly attacking humans.

"That shouldn't be the case." Ou Yang thought carefully, but couldn't find any information about fungi infecting animals. "If fungi could infect animals, wouldn't it have been a mess long ago? It wouldn't have waited until today."

Zombie ants are also parasitized by fungi, but this fungus only targets specific groups. Although it can also infect other types of ants, the control effect is not ideal.

In addition, there are fungi in nature that parasitize caterpillars or other insects, and they also have clear targets.

In other words, the parasitism of fungi is very targeted, and the possibility of cross-species parasitism is very small.

Much more specific than viruses and bacteria.

Since the F fungus uses humans as its host, it may be possible to infect chimpanzees and gorillas, but the possibility of parasitizing other mammals is very small.

For example, if the fungus could parasitize rats, would Brown Bear City be what it is now? Wouldn't there be mad rats everywhere, attacking humans everywhere?

Video continues.

Several young people, including Emily, were very excited. They kept taking pictures, discussing the value of prehistoric relics, and found more traces of prehistoric human activities in the cave.

A young man named Kevin was the bravest and always walked in front.

In the picture, he suddenly stopped and shouted in surprise towards the dark cave: "Look, look!"

The light flickered in the empty cave, and the others looked confused: "What are you looking at?"

"Wow, wow!" Kevin couldn't stop laughing and kept taking pictures with his phone. The scene was a bit weird.

"Kevin?" Emily called. "Are you okay?"

Kevin ignored him and touched a piece of stone with a look of admiration on his face: "Amazing, incredible, this is definitely the greatest discovery of this century..."

"Hey, are you okay?" the only black brother in the team asked with concern.

"Go away, nigger!" Kevin's face turned pale and he shouted.

"Kevin!" Emily yelled, "You're going too far!"

The black brother remained restrained: "Apologize, you must apologize immediately!"

Kevin's face suddenly showed a bit of ferocity: "Sorry, nigger, are you satisfied?"

The Black Brothers could no longer restrain themselves and suddenly exploded.

However, Kevin was one step faster. He picked up a stone and smashed it on the black brother's head, causing blood to splatter.

The two girls screamed.

Kevin hit the black brother several times until he was completely motionless, then he stood up and stared at the two girls with a ferocious look.

The screams stopped abruptly.

"Run, run quickly——"

The picture shook violently, darkness was replaced by brightness, followed by the sound of running in the snow and heavy breathing, and then the video stopped abruptly.

Ouyang...

Is it an open ending?

"What about the back?" he asked.

"No more." Song Lei said.

"No, there are more videos I copied back, right?" Ou Yang really wanted to know what happened next.

"That's all the stuff related to the expedition. The rest are research videos."

Ou Yang scratched his scalp vigorously, regretting that he didn't copy back the remaining two-thirds.

It's clear that Garrison...or possibly someone else, eventually found Patient Zero's phone and managed to copy the files from it into the movie.

The remaining video files are still in the computer and should be in the hands of the Blood Alliance, or they may have been destroyed in the chaos.

If you miss this opportunity, the possibility of accessing these files again will be negligible.

However, Ou Yang did not feel any regrets, after all, the most critical part had been copied back.

He took out his cell phone and handed it to Song Lei: "Brother Song, give me a copy of the research materials."

"Okay!" Song Lei agreed readily and packed and stored all the text and video.

The progress bar slowly advanced, and Song Lei suddenly said, "I have another piece of news. It's reported that an epidemic broke out in Alaska not long ago. However, that area is vast and sparsely populated, and they were well prepared, so the outbreak was brought under control as soon as it appeared."

When everyone heard this, their expressions became extremely solemn.

"What about the process? Just a piece of news without a beginning or an end, without any detailed process?" Ma Zhiyuan asked.

"No."

Ma Zhiyuan said in a deep voice: "First it was Xiongzhou, then Alaska. Where will the next place be for an outbreak?"

"Aga is too unique and unrepresentative. It might not be so easy to control the situation in a place with a better climate or a larger population," Ou Yang analyzed carefully. "Now it depends on whether Migong can contain the epidemic within Xiongzhou. If they can, there's still hope. If not..."

He didn't say anything more, but everyone understood what he meant.

A few hundred years ago, the continents were separated by the ocean. Even if all humans on the Mi continent died out, it would not affect other regions.

But it is different now. There is frequent travel between continents. If the epidemic is not controlled, it is only a matter of time before it spreads to the whole world.

Perhaps the fungus has already spread to other areas, but has not yet broken out.

Thinking of this, everyone felt depressed and no longer had the mood to continue chatting.

Ou Yang, weighed down, returned to his room, laid on his bed, pulled out his phone, and began to look through the research materials he had retrieved from the lab building. Much of the material contained basic information about fungi, which he had already learned about; there was nothing much to read.

But Ou Yang did not skip it directly. Instead, he read it carefully and compared it with his doctoral research, hoping to make different discoveries.

In the end, of course, there was no result.

The laboratory building also contained various observation data on immune individuals, and this part immediately aroused Ou Yang's great interest.

Studies have shown that the proportion of immune people in the population is 11.4%!

Ou Yang was immediately shocked. He had always thought that the number of immune people was very small, at most one percent, but he didn't expect the proportion to be so high!
It’s not surprising when you think about it. There are many people infected but few immune people. Whether it is the Blood Alliance or any other organization, they are not very friendly to the immune people. To this day, countless immune people have died.

11.4%?

It is an exaggeration to say that 5% of immune people can survive!
In addition to the immune people, the experimental team also scientifically classified the infected people.

Among them, mild cases accounted for 38.2%; moderate cases accounted for 24.3%; severe cases accounted for 22.9%, and there were also a few extreme cases, accounting for 3.2% of super severe cases.

Ou Yang was quite puzzled. Once this thing is infected, there is no cure. It will enter the growth stage sooner or later. What's the point of distinguishing between mild, moderate and severe?

After looking at it carefully, I realized that the severity here does not refer to the depth of infection, but the symptoms after infection.

Simply put, mild cases refer to those in the early stages of hallucinations who, aside from imagining themselves in certain situations or identities, exhibit no other unusual behaviors, let alone violent tendencies. A small number of people, despite experiencing hallucinations, behave normally, though with some unexpected behavior, similar to sleepwalking.

It poses no harm to society, and even if it breaks out, it will not threaten other people, so the experimental team calls it a mild case.

Moderate symptoms refer to those infected with confused thinking, incoherent speech, and obviously aggressive behavior, which are relatively high-risk.

Severe cases are easy to understand. They are extremely aggressive. They either regard themselves as criminals or treat people around them as enemies. Shootings, attacks, and even suicidal explosions are more or less similar to those of severe patients.

Research suggests that these people are basically extremely insecure in their daily lives or have potential persecution complexes.

Ou Yang was a little confused. Mild, moderate and severe had already been classified. What did super severe illness mean?

It turns out that the term "super severe" actually refers to patients who are particularly suitable for fungal parasitism, with a very short incubation period and a rapid germination period. Even more outrageous is the growth period, when they can actually produce a body full of mushrooms.

Just outrageous.

Although everything has two sides, as long as there are immune people, there must be counterexamples, but most infected people will enter the bacterial stage only after they completely lose the ability to move.

For patients with extremely severe illness, the growth period and the fungus formation period are combined into one. Spores are not spread by breathing, but directly emitted by the mushrooms on their bodies.

The innate parasitic holy body belongs to it.

This thing reminded Ou Yang of the mushroom people in the game.

I continued to look through the materials and soon found the research report on the fungal mat.

To be honest, Ou Yang couldn't understand most of the content, and he had to guess at the parts he could understand.

In short, the fungal mat is actually a special form of fungi that requires the support of specific temperature, humidity and other environmental conditions.

According to Ou Yang's understanding, human remains are the basis of the fungal mat, the hyphae are the skeleton or blood vessels of the fungal mat, and the fungal mat itself is actually highly enriched with spores that cannot be released due to excessive humidity.

If the moisture in the fungal mat is dried, then Patient Zero will be a skeleton covered with mycelium, no different from the prehistoric human remains found by Emily and others in the cave.

Studies have shown that the spores in the fungal mat are not fixed, but undergo a metabolic process, during which hallucinogenic substances are continuously enriched. Therefore, once the spores in the fungal mat are released, their hallucinogenic effects far exceed those of ordinary spores.

Ou Yang suddenly realized that he didn't know how many times he had inhaled the spores, but he had never been hallucinated after just a few puffs. Now he finally solved the case.

In addition to the above, the remaining information also includes the entire process of fungal infection in humans, how immune people resist parasites, and various studies on hallucinogenic substances.

The research team believes that after humans inhale the spores, they will produce a special enzyme that will devour the parasitic spores.

But most people's immune systems are not very sensitive to the spores, either because the amount of enzyme is insufficient or the speed is too slow.

Moreover, this enzyme is only effective against spores. Once the spores take root in the lungs and grow hyphae, the enzyme loses its effect and the body can only watch as the hyphae continue to erode the body.

However, the experimental team lacked the necessary equipment, and the so-called antifungal enzyme existed only in theory.

According to the investigation of the experimental team, immune people will have a persistent high fever when they first come into contact with the spores, and they will gain immunity after recovery.

The infected person has basically no fever or only a mild fever.

Ou Yang suddenly thought of his own experience.

This all fits the bill, but his situation is different from others. Could there be another, even rarer enzyme in his body?
Unfortunately, there is no similar case mentioned in the information.

Ou Yang also tested Zhu Yiming and Jiang Yuwei. When they inhaled a small amount of spores, their brains became clearer, but their tolerance was much smaller than Ou Yang's, and they could not smell the spores.

Read on.

The research team speculates that this situation occurred because humans in prehistoric times had evolved the ability to be immune to fungi over a long period of time, but for some reason, the F fungus disappeared in the long river of history.

The immune ability that was once standard has gradually degenerated with the passage of time. Today, only a few humans still retain the immune gene.

The research team is very optimistic that as long as the immune genes are accurately located, it is entirely possible to achieve universal immunity to fungi through some technical means.

This is the best solution to fight the epidemic.

As a second best option, artificially synthesizing antifungal enzymes is also a good option.

Both methods can achieve the purpose of curing the root cause, but no matter which method is used, the cost is not high at all. It is still in the theoretical stage and requires a lot of follow-up research to be realized.

In addition, the information also mentions targeted therapies against spores and the fungus itself.

Ou Yang didn't understand the specifics, but the general meaning was similar to targeted therapy for cancer treatment.

As for the effect, this is the inhibitory drug that Lao Mi uses.

But in Ou Yang's impression, targeted drugs have always been synonymous with high prices, not much cheaper than gene therapy and enzyme technology.

Moreover, it seems that targeted drugs require genetic testing first, and then the drugs are prepared according to the specific situation in order to achieve the best therapeutic effect.

So, whose genes are the inhibitors that Lao Mi is using based on?

However, Ou Yang's knowledge of targeted drugs was very limited. His only impression seemed to come from a novel, and he had no idea whether it was correct or not.

There is no need to mention the rest of the information. Many of the words are simply incomprehensible, and when they are put together, I have no idea what they mean.

Ou Yang gritted his teeth and watched until he was sure that there would be no further gains, then he put down his phone in disappointment.

(End of this chapter)