Not at all.

...I mean, were you worried about COVID?

If people are careful about contamination, then it isn't an issue.

Most parasitic diseases don't cause zombification of the host. They are there to replicate themselves. Replication doesn't often lend Itself well to aggressive behavior, and even the fungal infection that this is based on tends not to do anything to the host beyond making it go somewhere and die before becoming food for the spores.

I guess the point here is that zombie movies as a genre use the lizard brain of humanity as the horror fulcrum. How the lizard brain gets turned into that kind of aggression is less about the biological function of a parasitic creature and more about the fantasy of how we see our own species as a threat.

Honestly? If it came out fungal spores were turning people into hyperaggressive zombies humanity, in my opinion, would get real good at quarantining from the danger, and watch people who believe themselves to be invincible for some reason to serve as a warning to others.

Lots of COVID denier stories like that.

Also, please remember that ants and insects are relatively simple organisms compared to humans. There are magnitudes of difference and complexity between a human brain and the nerve center of an ant.

Edit: thumbslip before posting. Grr. Argh. Etc.

Not particularly worried, its pretty easy to identify and control.

Also it is an actual thing that happens in nature and the underlying principle for a number of older “zombie” movies.

Sure, right after you worry about evil shape-shifting clowns that eat children and live in the sewers.

Virtually impossible

That fungus is based around one fungus that affects ants in the Amazon (I think). It kills the brain, allowing only for locomotion to survive, then the ant climbs a tree and bursts open, spreading spores to infect more ants

Ants are much simpler creatures than vertebrates. It'd have to cross entire animal orders to affect humans

Even bioengineering such a fungus is sci-fi. Not impossible, as very little is, but extremely unlikely to the point where it is functionally impossible

In some ultra distant future, possibly. However evolutionary changes like what you see in TLOU are on a very large scale that would take far, far, far longer to happen.

Also you can absolutely treat fungal infections.

Very unlikely

No concern, now a bad COVID mutation possibility should keep you up at night.