The Fall and Rise of Screwworm
79 points - today at 12:58 PM
SourcePlanktonne
today at 5:10 PM
> (Some anti-screwworm efforts may have been hindered by DOGE, which cut APHIS staff, screwworm monitoring programs, and may have delayed funding for the Mexico facility, but it’s hard to be confident about this, and the administration has unsurprisingly rejected these claims.)
For an article that is so detailed in other areas, this feels like a very short dismissal of a topic that--regardless of direction--deserves more focus.
needSomeCoffee
today at 4:34 PM
Thanks to the author. That was a great read imho. Loved the early parts about the guys who -- despite the ridicule and lack of resources -- achieved eradication. Again, great read.
I wonder if anyone ever did the math on whether trying to maintain a barrier at the Darian Gap with occasional failures was really a better financial choice than teaming up with South American countries to drive screwworms to extinction.
AlotOfReading
today at 2:38 PM
Yes, they did because various countries have talked to the US about expanding it. The problem is that South America is an enormous place, whereas Panama is a narrow isthmus. It could have been done with some amount of money, but that opportunity ended in 2010 at the latest.
moffkalast
today at 5:03 PM
In the end though, history will see it as a half measure where they really shouldn't have half assed it. It only took one moron to defund the project and all of it will come streaming back.
[deleted for being misinformation]
Hmm, that seems to contradict the article directly - insecticides were used to try to battle screwworm initially and were not really effective - the solution was using sterile male flies to stop reproduction - which would work in South America just as well as it did in North (with sufficient scale)
consensus1
today at 5:16 PM
I think the issue is that you would have to push the barrier across the entire South American continent, which is twice the distance of the US-Mexico border and also crosses the Amazon where there is basically no infrastructure.
comrade1234
today at 2:52 PM
Out of curiosity I looked up the cost to south American beef producers like Argentina/brazil. The extra constant animal inspections costs ~$10 per cattle up until slaughter I think. Not a huge cost but a pain nonetheless.
$10 in Brazil/Argentine would be significantly more in the US because of labour costs I assume. Is there any training needed for the inspections/enough people who could do it on a short notice in the US? Could drive up the price even more.
Not that I believe it'll drive up the price that much but I wouldn't be surprised if it ends up being 50-70 USD per in the US.
Surely the bigger issue is not the inspections, but the loss of infected livestock?
marcosdumay
today at 4:21 PM
It's not some contagious disease that will spread to every animal. One can just treat the infected cattle until they get healthy again.
whalesalad
today at 2:36 PM
> Eventually capable of producing more than 200 million screwworm flies a week, the Mission factory was a grotesque marvel of insect-producing efficiency. Operating 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, it was, in essence, a 76,000-square-foot artificial wound. Trays full of meat, blood, and water, each one heated to the exact right temperature to stimulate screwworm growth, moved through the facility on a monorail system timed to the lifecycle of the screwworm.
Imagine working at the screwworm factory.
alexpotato
today at 3:01 PM
I was born with no sense of smell [0] and I always wondered if I could combine that with my tech skills to be CTO at a place like the screwworm factory or possibly Waste Management.
0 - https://x.com/alexpotato/status/1559865770515087360?s=20
> I applied this principle and married someone with a great sense of smell
May you and your smelling nose wife live happily ever after.
trashface
today at 4:33 PM
I'm sure the fly production methodology has improved over the years, but based on what TFA describes, I'm not sure lacking smell would save you from disgust. I think even a Buddhist would be hard-pressed to find compassion for this particular fly species.
computerdork
today at 6:03 PM
Scenes from the human harvesting operations at in the Matrix come to mind, but am sure it's different than that:)
bee_rider
today at 2:41 PM
I guess you’d probably have taken some solace in the fact that you didn’t have to live at the screwworm factory. Past tense, unfortunately, since the worms are setting up their own factories all over.
CodingJeebus
today at 4:02 PM
> Overall, the screwworm program seems like a classic case of something becoming a victim of its own success: a problem got solved so thoroughly that we forget how big of a problem it was, and we gradually undermine the conditions that made the solution possible.
Chesterson's Fence strikes again. It's so easy to wax poetic about how ineffective government spending always is and should be cut to the bone that we don't stop to recognize that preventative programs like this save us from billions in economic losses.
JKCalhoun
today at 5:11 PM
"Some anti-screwworm efforts may have been hindered by DOGE, which cut APHIS staff, screwworm monitoring programs, and may have delayed funding for the Mexico facility…"
Yep.
consensus1
today at 5:19 PM
The article is very clear that the issue arose in 2021 and the main causes are increased migration / cattle smuggling across the Darien Gap and over zealous COVID lockdowns. But sure, cherry pick that quote because you want to blame something that happened 4 years after the problem started.
> The article is very clear that the issue arose in 2021
“Sometime around 2023, the barrier at Panama failed”
And further text suggesting a fairly normal incursion in ‘21 that didn’t become a major issue until much later.
> and over zealous COVID lockdowns
“The disruption caused by COVID-19 seems to be partly to blame”
I love when people insert hyper-inflammatory bullshit because they have a stupid axe to grind.
There are like, 10 paragraphs of equally relevant contributors, but you picked out the two that make you angry and are pretending those are the “main causes”?
Come the fuck on.
taco_emoji
today at 4:44 PM
Well that's nightmare fuel D:
MagicMoonlight
today at 3:59 PM
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qsxfthnkp2322
today at 2:30 PM
[flagged]
ourmandave
today at 3:59 PM
Eggs were just plan old boring corruption with price fixing in 2004-2008. And then again in 2022-2025.
Big Eggs made $1.2B and the fine is $3.3M and donating 53M eggs.
Yeah, that'll stop 'em from doing it again.
AnimalMuppet
today at 3:39 PM
If you think that screwworm is just an excuse to raise prices, I think that you badly misunderstand the situation.