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Alan W. Dowd is a Senior Fellow with the American Security Council Foundation, where he writes on the full range of topics relating to national defense, foreign policy and international security. Dowd’s commentaries and essays have appeared in Policy Review, Parameters, Military Officer, The American Legion Magazine, The Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations, The Claremont Review of Books, World Politics Review, The Wall Street Journal Europe, The Jerusalem Post, The Financial Times Deutschland, The Washington Times, The Baltimore Sun, The Washington Examiner, The Detroit News, The Sacramento Bee, The Vancouver Sun, The National Post, The Landing Zone, Current, The World & I, The American Enterprise, Fraser Forum, American Outlook, The American and the online editions of Weekly Standard, National Review and American Interest. Beyond his work in opinion journalism, Dowd has served as an adjunct professor and university lecturer; congressional aide; and administrator, researcher and writer at leading think tanks, including the Hudson Institute, Sagamore Institute and Fraser Institute. An award-winning writer, Dowd has been interviewed by Fox News Channel, Cox News Service, The Washington Times, The National Post, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and numerous radio programs across North America. In addition, his work has been quoted by and/or reprinted in The Guardian, CBS News, BBC News and the Council on Foreign Relations. Dowd holds degrees from Butler University and Indiana University. Follow him at twitter.com/alanwdowd.

ASCF News

Scott Tilley is a Senior Fellow at the American Security Council Foundation, where he writes the “Technical Power” column, focusing on the societal and national security implications of advanced technology in cybersecurity, space, and foreign relations.

He is an emeritus professor at the Florida Institute of Technology. Previously, he was with the University of California, Riverside, Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute, and IBM. His research and teaching were in the areas of computer science, software & systems engineering, educational technology, the design of communication, and business information systems.

He is president and founder of the Center for Technology & Society, president and co-founder of Big Data Florida, past president of INCOSE Space Coast, and a Space Coast Writers’ Guild Fellow.

He has authored over 150 academic papers and has published 28 books (technical and non-technical), most recently Systems Analysis & Design (Cengage, 2020), SPACE (Anthology Alliance, 2019), and Technical Justice (CTS Press, 2019). He wrote the “Technology Today” column for FLORIDA TODAY from 2010 to 2018.

He is a popular public speaker, having delivered numerous keynote presentations and “Tech Talks” for a general audience. Recent examples include the role of big data in the space program, a four-part series on machine learning, and a four-part series on fake news.

He holds a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Victoria (1995).

Contact him at stilley@cts.today.

Dealing with COVID catastrophe, India now reporting 'black fungus'

Thursday, May 13, 2021

Categories: ASCF News Emerging Threats

Comments: 0

Tauseef Mustafa/AFP via Getty Images Health workers wearing personal protective equipment suits attend to COVID-19 coronavirus patients inside a temporary COVID care facility in New Delhi on May 2, 2021.

Amid the staggering 300,000 to 400,000 COVID-19 infections reported daily over the last week in India, doctors are now reporting a new problem: a growing number of a deadly fungal infections among those recovering from coronavirus.

Experts believe these infections, known as mucormycosis which had a high prevalence in India, compared to other countries, prior to the current pandemic are not caused by COVID-19 itself.

Rather, some doctors in India believe these fungal infections are exacerbated by the use of steroids, a common treatment for COVID-19, which can suppress the immune system.

Mucorales is a fungus found worldwide and most people with working immune systems never know they have been in contact with this mold since the immune system does its job of keeping it at bay.

Unfortunately, people who have a suppressed immune system and those with uncontrolled diabetes are particularly susceptible to this rare fungal infection. Without proper immune defense, this type of fungus can cause life-threatening illness in the body.

It manifests as a black, fungal infection in the sinuses or lungs and can spread from the sinuses to the brain. Other more rare places to have this infection are in the skin, gut, kidney or throughout the body known as disseminated infection.

More than half of people who develop mucormycosis die, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It's typically treated with anti-fungal medication, either through an IV or by mouth, and the infected tissue may need to be removed surgically.

In case reports published in the scientific journal Mycopathologia, authors named this disease COVID-19 associated mucormycosis, or CAM, and a review of recent literature found that most cases were associated with diabetes, but they also found at least three cases that showed an association with steroid treatments in patients with COVID-19.

Three of the eight cases studied were patients in the United States. India has the second-highest prevalence of diabetes in the world and the United States has the third highest, which may also place these patients at higher risk.

More research about the association of COVID-19, mucormycosis and the use of steroids is needed, but it's a combination of problems that can quickly lead to death if it is not recognized and treated early.

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