Go look at the number of YouTube videos about the real Cordyceps fungus and the cumulative views.
It's a premise that is absolutely ripe to put a whole new spin on the zombie genre for TV and movies.
Heck a big TLOU HBO show could be bigger and waay more interesting than TWD ever was. Primarily because it's a more believable premise.
Unlike zombies which are reanimated dead, the infected in TLOU are way more realistic. Pathogens that previously affect one species can cross over into humans at any time and so it's no stretch of the imagination to conceive of a cordyceps doing the same... in fact it's probably an inevitability. That what makes TLOU'a concept so terrifying and why fear-mongering youtubers are making so much ad revenue off of it.