At the Buena Vista “Lightning in a Bottle” music festival, a soil pathogen managed to infiltrate the lungs of at least five attendees, surreptitiously floating in the air.
Three people experienced such severe symptoms that they required hospitalization due to ‘Valley fever.’ This disease is endemic to the southern San Joaquin Valley and is caused by two species of Coccidioides fungi. These fungi grow in the soil and dirt as mold.
The California Department of Public Health (CDPH) expresses concern that there may be additional cases from the festival that have gone undiagnosed.
RELATED STORIES
In May, over 20,000 people gathered at Buena Vista Lake in Kern County for the festival.
In 2019, a total of 190 individuals from California were diagnosed with a cocci infection affecting their skin, bones, or brain. This particular infection poses a significant risk of mortality.
According to officials at the California Department of Public Health (CDPH), previous occurrences of Valley fever were linked to individuals being exposed to dust and dirt at outdoor events and job sites where soil was being disturbed. This is particularly relevant in areas of California where Valley fever is prevalent.
The number of reported Valley fever cases in California has skyrocketed by 800 percent from 2000 to 2022.
According to a study conducted by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in 2017, there has been a significant increase in dust storms in the southwest, which has contributed to the rise in these cases.
Experts explain that a wet winter can promote the growth of mold and its spores. Subsequently, when the weather becomes drier, these spores are released from the saturated soil and become airborne along with the dust.
The event in Kern County took place over Memorial Day weekend in May, which provided the ideal conditions for the spread of cocci spores.
Attendees at the festival can be seen in videos on social media, engulfed in a cloud of dust. One user on TikTok even described the experience as a “magical journey through the dust.”
Festival attendees were informed about the possibility of strong winds and dust storms, but they were not warned about the hidden danger that these tiny particles can pose to their respiratory system.
“Taking care of patients with Valley Fever and disseminated disease in California costs an estimated billion dollars annually,” states Manish Butte, an infectious disease specialist at the University of California, Los Angeles.
“But the treatments available today are similar to those that were developed in the 1990s, and the medical community still lacks a clear understanding of which patients will experience severe symptoms and which ones will have milder forms of the disease.”
Researchers are concerned that the increasing frequency of droughts and floods in the future may lead to the spread of Valley fever throughout the entire west coast. Approximately ten years ago, Washington state experienced its first case of the disease, which had migrated from the San Joaquin Valley, where it was originally named.
The Valley fever outbreak at the “Lightning in a Bottle” music festival foretells the future occurrence of illnesses.
