It feels like a bad game of D&D where the DM keeps heavily pushing the evil path, despite player choices not choosing that path.

Unfortunately, viruses don’t follow geopolitical boundaries. The extremely far right’s vaccine hesitancy will put the world in danger and cause a resurgence of various diseases, alongside emerging threats, such as fungal infections.

They’re referencing the contiguous United States. Otherwise, the Southwest would include Hawaii too :3

I loved plant ID books as a kid, and even ate some of the safer ones.

I decided “Why not get into mushroom foraging?” And bought a book on them. Reading it cover to cover, I swiftly realized that far too many look almost identical when young, when old, when wet, have imitators, etc. it’s been decades and I still don’t fuck with mushrooms. My mother independently came to the same conclusion when she took an interest in mushrooms, lmfao.