Naegleria fowleri (aka brain-eating amoeba)
https://www.nbcnews.com/healthmain/deadly-brain-amoeba-infec...
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/21/brain-ea...
On the first wipeout, my face smashed into the water, and it went very far up my nose.
On getting up, I remembered "Naegleria fowleri", and wondered, hmmmm this might have killed me.
Luckily no symptoms appeared over the next few days.
I feel like wakeboarding should be banned in warm freshwaters.
> The risk of Naegleria fowleri infection is very low. There were 29 reported infections in the United States in the 10 years from 2013 to 2022, despite millions of recreational water exposures each year. By comparison, in the 10 years from 2011 to 2020, there were an estimated 4,012 unintentional drowning deaths each year in the United States.
https://www.cdc.gov/parasites/naegleria/general.html
You’re 150x more likely to drown. And even that is exceedingly unlikely - like 0.05% or something per year.