Okay - I tried this strategy and it worked like a charm. Granted, you will not likely get a great score due to the length of this strategy but at least you will be able to move ahead to the parasite strain.
I started in a cold climate area because often I found that when I start in a hot zone, even though the disease spreads quicker - it often has a hard time taking hold in places like Iceland, Greenland, Canada or Russia.
1. Begin in Iceland (given that it has an airport and also a harbor for ease of transmission).
2. I first started with focusing my energy on upgrading the airborne and water transmission stats to the max as soon as I could.
3. I followed by upping my drug resistance by one notch
4. I also followed by upping my disease's heat resistance by 2 notches, and my cold resistance by 1 notch. (note you can do the above steps in any particular order - the key being point 5)
5. ...which is - do NOT let your fungus evolve until every single person in the world is affected by the disease. This could take a long time (10 to 15 min?). If you want to get things moving a bit by unleashing a spore here or there, that's fine (just don't overdo it at the beginning).
6. Whatever you do, make sure the world does NOT notice the disease up to the point when everyone is infected (but not dying yet). All the while, keep saving enough points so you can eventually upgrade the symptoms to the worst possible situation immediately (organ failure is the best IMO).
7. Once everyone is infected and the disease is still unknown, unleash the disease. Quickly upgrade your disease symptoms to something incredibly lethal (again, my suggestion is organ failure). Immediately you'll see people dying in droves. At the same time, the cure might move quickly, but as you accumulate points through people dying, you can start using points to counteract the cure by upgrading drug resistance, etc.
8. Soon enough, you will see that the body count will pile up asap. More than likely the country that is spearheading the cure will lose its population so fast that the speed of the cure will greatly diminish and eventually you will win the game.
Note: I did not use anything close to all the spores available. The strategy above, while tedious, did allow me to infect so many people that once the fungus got lethal in a hurry, there was no way for the cure to catch up with the sky high death rate.
Not only did this strategy work with the Fungus, but it also worked with the Parasite as well. Granted this method will NOT get you a very high score due to the lengthy nature of the infection process, but it will get you a win if you play your cards right based on the idea I mentioned above.
Normal Tips | Fungus 
