David Schweikert: “This is actually one of the occasions where we as Members of Congress actually should take a little bit of a victory…”

“This is actually one of the occasions where we as Members of Congress actually should take a little bit of a victory lap. For those of us in the desert Southwest we have something called Valley fever. It is a fungus in the soil. For most people it causes a little bit of scarring in the lung, It may seem like you have a flu for a few days. For some people--and I always mispronounce this--there is a differentiated version where it breaks out of the lung. I have a neighbor who is a former Vietnam helicopter pilot that within his hands he has to have the Valley fever carved out of his bones. It is horrible. I met someone at the National Institutes of Health a few years ago, a young African-American male that was just traveling through the Southwest, picked up these fungi, picked up a spore, and it was dissolving his spine. They were wiring him back together. Well, guess what has happened? Almost 8 years ago Kevin McCarthy, who is also in one of the pandemic areas, as I am, myself, in the Maricopa County area, we actually started to do this. We moved some resources around. We are on the cusp of the vaccine. The canine vaccine is out, we believe, this December, and it turns out they believe that basically the same formulary will work with humans, and the phase I trials in humans, I actually believe, begins this coming year. What is miraculous about this is the concept of a vaccine for a fungus, and it may actually cover much more than what we call Valley fever.…”