Thank you for your comment, Tom!

To be honest, the pathogen that killed those people is still unknown, according to the scientific literature. Maybe it was a fungus, as you suggest, but if this were the case, then Shi Zhengli and colleagues would have told so in their addendum. On the contrary, they recently retested the old serum samples, looking for viral proteins of SARS-CoV-2.

Moreover, in the Master thesis by Li Xu, it is stated that Dr. Zhong Nanshan - well known Chinese epidemiologist - thought the disease was caused by a viral infection, with a secondary aspergillosis. I think those pneumonia are still matter of debate, as far as we know from the publicly available information.

As a scientist, I rely more on academic documents (such as papers and theses), rather than interviews on magazines. With all due respect to Scientific American, which is an excellent editorial product.