{"id":1653780,"date":"2022-09-22T16:23:24","date_gmt":"2022-09-22T20:23:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1653780"},"modified":"2022-09-22T16:23:37","modified_gmt":"2022-09-22T20:23:37","slug":"beware-of-brain-eating-amoebas-and-lazy-journalists-but-mostly-lazy-journalists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/beware-of-brain-eating-amoebas-and-lazy-journalists-but-mostly-lazy-journalists\/","title":{"rendered":"Beware Of Brain-Eating Amoebas And Lazy Journalists (But Mostly Lazy Journalists)"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">22<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fbeware-of-brain-eating-amoebas-and-lazy-journalists-but-mostly-lazy-journalists%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1653780&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><\/div>\n<p>Since we\u2019re on the topic of <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2022\/09\/22\/politicos-fearmongering-over-christian-nationalism-is-a-shoddy-deception\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">media fearmongering<\/a>, check out this chilling <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/environment\/2022\/sep\/21\/brain-eating-amoeba-climate-crisis-naegleria-fowleri\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">headline<\/a> from The Guardian: \u201cHow the climate crisis is fueling the spread of a brain-eating amoeba.\u201d The piece begins with the heartbreaking story of a Nebraska boy\u00a0who may have died from Naegleria fowleri, a shape-shifting killer amoeba, after swimming in a lake. Naegleria fowleri grows in warm freshwater, \u201cmaking it well-suited to proliferate as temperatures rise in the US,\u201d warns the site.<\/p>\n<p>Facing the prospect of never setting foot into another body of water again, I googled Naegleria fowleri and found a number of articles that repackaged the Guardian story, but ratcheted up the alarmism. \u201cAccording to Scientists, a Brain-eating Amoeba Are Rapidly Spreading Due to Climate Change,\u201d Nature World News <a href=\"https:\/\/www.natureworldnews.com\/articles\/53232\/20220922\/according-scientists-brain-eating-amoeba-rapidly-spreading-due-climate-change.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">warned<\/a>. The British tabloid, The Mirror, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mirror.co.uk\/news\/world-news\/deadly-brain-eating-amoeba-sweeping-28056821\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">says<\/a>, \u201cDeadly brain-eating amoeba sweeping the globe fuelled by climate crisis, experts warn.\u201d None of these articles, or others like them, offer any scientific evidence to substantiate the contention that climate change is \u201cfueling cases\u201d of Naegleria fowleri or that Naegleria fowleri is \u201csweeping the globe\u201d or \u201crapidly spreading,\u201d or even that the amoeba is something any of us should spend time worrying about. <\/p>\n<p>In the past decade, there have been only 31 cases of the brain-eating amoeba attacks in the United States. There have been 154 cases <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cdc.gov\/parasites\/naegleria\/state-map.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">all told<\/a> since 1962 (though one suspects the amoeba was more likely to go undetected or misdiagnosed in the past). In colder states, there are barely any cases, with Minnesota (and its 14,380 lakes) leading the way with two in the past 60 years. Our southern states already have warm water, and Naegleria fowleri is extremely rare there, as well. To put it in perspective, for every Naegleria fowleri death, hundreds of people have died falling out of trees, off ladders, and in bathtubs.<\/p>\n<p>Deaths from Naegleria fowleri do not even rise to a rounding error in our death totals. Then again, climate has never been less dangerous to human beings than it is today. Of all the ways people die in this world, natural disasters <a href=\"https:\/\/ourworldindata.org\/natural-disasters\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">account<\/a> for only 0.1 percent of them. Deaths due to all climate have <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/climate-activists-disasters-fire-storms-deaths-change-cop26-glasgow-global-warming-11635973538\">plummeted<\/a> for decades, even as manmade carbon emissions have spiked. People like to point out that these positive trends are largely due to technological advances and adaptation. <em>Yes<\/em>. Acclimating to changes in climate, as we\u2019ve been doing for 250,000 years or so, is often known as \u201cprogress.\u201d Retrofitting the economy to comport with 1800s technology is the opposite.<\/p>\n<p>But I get it. Anything tangentially related to weather is fodder for climate change hysteria, and nature provides journalists with a perpetual flow of gruesome copy\u2014hurricanes, wildfires, floods, drought, and so on. And since you can get away with virtually anything in this genre of journalism, putting the words \u201cclimate crisis\u201d in the vicinity of \u201cbrain-eating amoeba\u201d was probably too much to pass up.<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\" \/>\n<div class=\"article-author-description fst-italic\">\n  David Harsanyi is a senior editor at The Federalist. Harsanyi is a nationally syndicated columnist and author of five books\u2014the most recent, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Eurotrash-America-Reject-Failed-Continent\/dp\/0063066017\/\">Eurotrash: Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent<\/a>. His work has appeared in National Review, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Reason, New York Post, and numerous other publications. Follow him on Twitter, <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/davidharsanyi\/\">@davidharsanyi<\/a>.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Since we\u2019re on the topic of media fearmongering, check out this chilling headline from The Guardian: \u201cHow the climate crisis is fueling the spread of a brain-eating amoeba.\u201d The piece<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":831,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1653780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1653780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/831"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1653780"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1653780\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1653780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1653780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1653780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}