Sure, I guess that could refer to the Republican candidates. But this is more important: two Plains states are suffering. Iowa, long a gateway to political self-importance, appears to have lost its role as decider. And Joplin, Missouri (the west of Missouri qualifies as part of the Plains) has gotten a double-whammy out of the tornado that hit the town.
The tornado not only devastated Joplin, it stirred up a deadly fungus. This is not a joke about Republicans. Three people in Joplin have died of mucormycosis so far; many are ill.
Eight tornado victims have fallen ill from the mysterious infection, and each had “multiple injuries and secondary wound infections,” said Jacqueline Lapine, a spokeswoman for the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services. Citing confidentiality rules, officials declined to discuss the treatment or condition of the patients.
The fungus that causes the infection, which is believed to be mucormycosis, is most commonly found in soil and wood, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is studying samples from the eight Joplin patients. “It is a very aggressive and severe infection,” said Dr. Benjamin Park, chief of the epidemiology team in the C.D.C.’s Mycotic Diseases Branch. “It is also very rare.” ...NYT
The tornado, of course, didn't carry disease in its funnel. The disease was there, ready to be stirred up. But the incidence of severe infection and illness reminds us that tinkering with our environment doesn't just bring us regular occurrences of "unusual" weather patterns but activates and exposes us to substances in our soil and water -- in nature -- that can be killers to people with compromised immune systems.
Mucormycosis is caused by common fungi frequently found in the soil and in decaying vegetation. Most individuals are exposed to these fungi on a daily basis, but people with weakened immune systems are more susceptible to infection. ...Mucormycosis has an extremely high death rate even when aggressive surgery is done. Death rates range from 25 - 85% depending on the body area involved and your overall health. ...CDC
The problem in Iowa is not fungal disease but fundy disease. In Iowa, the Times reports, "the nature of the voters who tend to turn out for the Republican caucuses — a heavy concentration of evangelical Christians and ideological conservatives overlaid with parochial interests — is discouraging some candidates from competing there."
A kind of environmental/political mucormycosis afflicts once-sensible Iowa. It's a recent development, as politics go, traceable not to decaying vegetation but the decaying of brains caused by communications cables. Iowans used to be echt-normal Americans. Now they're doddering, twitching victims of the right wing's virtual ownership of cable TV. The fundy fungus is in the air, it's in the ground.
Huntsman, who accepts the reality of global warming, isn't going near the place. Gingrich, albeit for other reasons, imploded there. Candidate-in-chief, Mitt Romney, has dumped Iowa.
Mr. Romney’s decision, in particular, suggests that candidates who are viewed suspiciously by the state’s religious conservatives may stand little chance there. Mr. Romney, who was once a pro-choice governor and passed a health care plan that served as the inspiration for President Obama’s, has struggled in Iowa for years.
Some of the state’s Republicans had already been wringing their hands about the outsize influence of the state’s religious conservatives.
“If Iowa becomes some extraneous right-wing outpost, you have to question whether it is going to be a good place to vet your presidential candidates,” Doug Gross, a Republican activist from Iowa, told The New York Times this year. ...NYT
