Similarly, Cryptococcus gattii was for decades known to exist in British Columbia in Canada, mostly on trees or in the soil around them, but it never harmed a human. Then, in 1999, it developed a sudden virulence, causing serious lung and brain infections among a scattering of victims in western Canada and the United States. Exact figures are impossible to come by because the disease is often misdiagnosed and, remarkably, is not reportable in California, one of the main sites of occurrence, but
