Along Florida's warm coastal margins, where the sea offers both sustenance and peril, a fourth person has died this year from Vibrio vulnificus — a bacterium that lives quietly in oysters until it enters a human body and destroys tissue with devastating speed. The deaths form a pattern that public health officials can no longer treat as coincidence, pointing to a deepening tension between a beloved culinary tradition and a measurable biological threat. As water temperatures rise and cases accumulate, Florida finds itself navigating the ancient human dilemma of abundance and danger arriving in
Fourth Florida death linked to flesh-eating bacteria from oysters
Four Florida residents have died from Vibrio vulnificus infection linked to oyster consumption.