I'm in no way a scientist, but it sounds like the bacteria grows best in oxygen-free, low acidity environments with a lot of protein: that's dead things. Paraly

I'm in no way a scientist, but it sounds like the bacteria grows best in oxygen-free, low acidity environments with a lot of protein: that's dead things. Paralyzing your host is a bad idea for diseases that will be permanently destroyed shortly after their host dies, but it's a pretty great plan if it creates a wonderful ecosystem free of pesky immune cells and oxygen for you to grow and produce spores that can happily sit around forever waiting for something to eat them.