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Oh good, screwworms are back (2025)

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Re: Oh good, screwworms are back (2025)

#51

Post by madaxe_again »

readthenotes1 wrote: post #27
jmward01 wrote: post #24

Trust in science is so low in the US that this was bound to happen. The author's conclusion nails it: But institutional failures like this aren’t just the aggregate failure of a number of irresponsible people, they are a failure of a cultural attitude that doesn’t demand excellence from everyone in order to get the job done. I'll add though that when crisis happens the entity 'doing something about it' suddenly looks…

Is this like fouci funding gain of function research and then being in charge of managing results (including but not limited to suppressing information about his role in it)?

So close!! That is a shape

Re: Oh good, screwworms are back (2025)

#52

Post by fanatic2pope »

timr wrote: post #6
atoav wrote: post #5

Headline from March of last year: Bird flu, screwworm monitoring among foreign aid programs killed by Trump See: https://www.agri-pulse.com/articles/22636-bird-flu-screwworm... Elect stupid leaders, get stupid consequences.

As the article you've linked to makes clear, this problem predates the cut in funding.

Umm, yes? The funding was put in place because of the problem.

Re: Oh good, screwworms are back (2025)

#53

Post by anamax »

jmward01 wrote: post #24

Trust in science is so low in the US that this was bound to happen. The author's conclusion nails it: But institutional failures like this aren’t just the aggregate failure of a number of irresponsible people, they are a failure of a cultural attitude that doesn’t demand excellence from everyone in order to get the job done. I'll add though that when crisis happens the entity 'doing something about it' suddenly looks…

> Trust in science is so low in the US that this was bound to happen.

How is "They were almost certainly transported via unchecked northward migration of people and animals." a consequence of loss of trust in science?

Re: Oh good, screwworms are back (2025)

#54

Post by brendoelfrendo »

zdragnar wrote: post #26
inigyou wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I heard there was one keeping this under control. It involved transgenic flies, which sounds close to transgender. DOGE ended it. It was also pitched as "why are we studying the mating habits of flies?"

We already have medicines that treat the problem. We've had it solved for a long time. We didn't need to genetically modify flies to solve it then, and we don't now. See sibling threads.

We didn't need to genetically modify them, we just sterilized them with x rays and the released masses of sterilized flies into the population. We had that tech in the 50s and wiped them out in the 60s. The best treatment we had was eliminating them from the United States and that's no longer reality.

Re: Oh good, screwworms are back (2025)

#56

Post by brendoelfrendo »

timr wrote: post #14
jurgenburgen wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh great, then the next admin can blame this one when the problem is still around. Why solve a problem when you can just blame the other guys.

The current administration is funding an increase in response: https://www.usda.gov/sites/default/files/documents/nws-visit... It's right there, linked in TFA. The press release provided by the GP is instead discussing funding for the "UN Food and Agriculture Organization", which is different. Apparently they also do some unspecified amount of work on the issue.

That aid money went, in part, to preventing the spread of screwworms in Central America. As of 2024, the flies were mostly eradicated in Mexico and efforts were on-going in Panama to wipe them out down to the Darien Gap. In less than 2 years we've gone from them being almost entirely eradicated in North America to infections observed in the United States.

Re: Oh good, screwworms are back (2025)

#57

Post by hristov »

This article is misleading because it does not mention Trump or Musk or Doge, and they were mostly responsible for the new outbreak in the US. Mexican cattle imports were banned in the US in 2024 because of the screw worm. Then trump allowed mexican cattle imports in February 2025 even though the screw worm situation was not resolved. Then, in March 2025, Musk's DOGE cut funding for COPEG, the organization that suppresses the screw worm in Panama.

Then the screw worm really spread over Mexico and the United states. The administration then stopped mexican cattle imports in the summer of 2025 again, panicked because of the spread of the screw worm, then started them again in the fall of 2025, panicked because of high beef prices.

Panama was the ideal place to control the screw worm because it was a small chokepoint. The flies that birth the screw worm cannot fly far by themselves, the screw worm moves with cattle, and cattle almost always moves by land. So COPEG acting at the chokepoint was a cheap and effective way to keep the screw worm from entering north america. The article talks about how great COPEG is, it does not mention that Musk's DOGE cut their funding.

But now the screw worm is all over Mexico and the US, the choke point is lost. Now they are spending much more money all over Latin America and the US with much smaller effect.

Re: Oh good, screwworms are back (2025)

#58

Post by skolskoly »

BobaFloutist wrote: post #16
silexia wrote: post #11

[flagged]

>We have had our access to medications for livestock severely curtailed over recent years. Oh no, tell me it's not ivermectin...

https://web.archive.org/web/20220202042136/https://www.fda.g... https://www.tga.gov.au/safety/safety-monitoring-and-informat...

Did some further reading, and it seems likely that the shortages were at least partially created by a boom in demand and crackdown on counterfeit ivermectin products. It's hard for me to see this as a partisan issue when everyone involved was just doing the best they could under fog-of-war conditions.

Re: Oh good, screwworms are back (2025)

#59

Post by BobaFloutist »

ifyoubuildit wrote: post #41
BobaFloutist wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We have had our access to medications for livestock severely curtailed over recent years. Oh no, tell me it's not ivermectin...

Are you saying this because you only recognize the name from breathless covid propaganda? Or because you know ivermectin is pretty important in livestock management.

Both! I think it would be unfortunate if a valuable deworming drug was difficult to access in an acute worm crisis because it had became unexpectedly politically salient from an crisis that did not involve worms.

Re: Oh good, screwworms are back (2025)

#60

Post by BobaFloutist »

skolskoly wrote: post #58
BobaFloutist wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We have had our access to medications for livestock severely curtailed over recent years. Oh no, tell me it's not ivermectin...

https://web.archive.org/web/20220202042136/https://www.fda.g... https://www.tga.gov.au/safety/safety-monitoring-and-informat... Did some further reading, and it seems likely that the shortages were at least partially created by a boom in demand and crackdown on counterfeit ivermectin products. It's hard for me to see this as a partisan issue when everyone involved was just doing the best they could under fog-of-war c…

I disagree, but I would also have a similar reaction if it turned out that toilet-paper supply chain issues left over from the pandemic were going to affect our ability to manage screwworms, and that particular overreaction was non-partisan.
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