alt.hn

6/10/2026 at 1:20:23 PM

Oh good, screwworms are back (2025)

 https://www.marginallycompelling.com/p/oh-good-screwworms-are-back

by timr

6/11/2026 at 5:32:44 PM

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 amazing, even if they were the cause. That means that it is a winning political strategy to create a lot of crisis so you can solve a few of them and look like a hero.

by jmward01

6/11/2026 at 6:18:01 PM

> 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?

by anamax

6/11/2026 at 7:09:03 PM

Mistaking the initiation of something as the cause of something is a common mistake. A spark starting a fire in a bin of oily rags is technically the 'cause' but that thinking is clearly short sighted. In reality it was the bad practices that created the environment that was the true culprit. This is an example of the same. I suspect there are constant incursions in and near panama but a layered approach of constant study, monitoring, consistent prevention techniques, etc are what stop a surge in 'unchecked northward migration' from something that happens once or twice and is contained and corrected into something that happens constantly and isn't figured out until this has spread and established itself over thousands of miles. So, yes, the spark was 'northward migration' but the 'unchecked' was because we gave up in being good at this job. We de-funded monitoring and study. We put in place political leaders and not technical experts all because 'expert' opinions aren't important. That is what created the 'unchecked' and why we are here now.

by jmward01

6/11/2026 at 8:40:09 PM

The US far-right is famous for (at least) two things:

1. Mistrust in science, and

2. A habit of hastily strangling government watchdog agencies.

#1 has put all such public-safety programs on the chopping block. #2 is the fatal stroke of the axe.

by IAmBroom

6/11/2026 at 6:13:08 PM

A lesson from The Incredibles which we didn’t collectively learn.

by tines

6/11/2026 at 5:42:23 PM

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)?

by readthenotes1

6/11/2026 at 5:50:53 PM

Yall ain't sending your best huh

by squibonpig

6/11/2026 at 5:44:13 PM

no

by jmward01

6/11/2026 at 6:00:27 PM

Spotted the intellectual.

by somelamer567

6/11/2026 at 6:06:08 PM

Was it ever really suppressed, if everyone knew about it? Because it was public information. No conspiracy.

The Right: "Nobody is talking about subject X, where is free speech". -> meanwhile -> "Everyone is talking about subject X", because you always had free speech. It was just a McGuffin to rile up the base and take control so you can suppress others.

by FrustratedMonky

6/11/2026 at 5:48:40 PM

Can't even spell the name right? Come on, man.

by devin

6/11/2026 at 6:14:30 PM

So close!! That is a shape

by madaxe_again

6/11/2026 at 12:12:54 AM

Chances of current US gov mounting a coordinated scientific campaign to get on top of this seem vanishingly small to me. They’re busy defunding and dismantling any gov operation that smells like science

by Havoc

6/11/2026 at 5:10:19 PM

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?"

by inigyou

6/11/2026 at 10:46:14 PM

> I heard there was one keeping this under control. It involved transgenic flies, which sounds close to transgender. DOGE ended it.

No.

First, the problem here predates DOGE by an entire presidential administration or more. If you had read the article, you’d know that the northward migration of flies started at least in 2020.

Second, the thing you’re misremembering has no relation to this program. It was funding for transgenic animals in a completely different area of research.

You are repeating hearsay that sounds like it should be the reason. It confirms your political priors while ironically making you feel smug about your scientific knowledge. I’m not a fan of the current administration, but seeing so many people here bend over backwards to blame this on their political enemies, without even a hint of intellectual curiosity is more depressing than anything the politicians have done. Your political team can be incompetent too — and probably is!

by timr

6/12/2026 at 3:42:07 AM

> It confirms your political priors while ironically making you feel smug about your scientific knowledge.

You are making the same error. Other Republicans (if not Trump) indeed criticized government-funded research into the screwworm lifecycle. Denying that the party of the president has been opposed to both science and regulation on principle -- including with this particular crisis -- makes you look naive at best, dishonest at worst.

https://cra.org/govaffairs/blog/2012/04/members-of-congress-...

by teachrdan

6/12/2026 at 8:05:01 AM

I'm not arguing that one political team is innocent. When it comes to correctly managing complex scientific problems, all politicians are reliably incompetent.

by timr

6/12/2026 at 4:43:24 PM

> but seeing so many people here bend over backwards to blame this on their political enemies, without even a hint of intellectual curiosity…

That sentence might have been stronger if you'd written:

“but seeing so many people here bend over backwards to blame this on my political enemies, without even a hint of intellectual curiosity…”

by Terretta

6/11/2026 at 5:24:53 PM

Just contemplate who is building major facilities in central and southern Texas, and the potential for poetic justice.

by bell-cot

6/11/2026 at 5:35:45 PM

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.

by zdragnar

6/11/2026 at 5:50:29 PM

> We already have medicines that treat the problem

We do have treatments of screwworm infestations, but it involves physically removing the larva and usually removing tissue as well as systemic treatments like antiparasitics. It's labor intensive and not cheap.

It also doesn't actually fix the _overall_ problem because screwworms will happily lay eggs in wild mammals too and so you will constantly be treating your livestock.

> We've had it solved for a long time

Yes, we solved it with mass releases of sterile flies over decades.

by magicalist

6/11/2026 at 5:48:19 PM

Yeah we did have it solved for a long time. We had no screwworms at all in the country. That was a great solution that lasted decades. Why would having to do all the work of applying medication, paying for the medication, animals that you catch late dying of infection and paying for those animals, people occasionally getting screwworms, pets dying to screwworms, etc etc etc be better or cheaper?

Also they don't genetically modify flies they still just irradiate the larva.

by squibonpig

6/11/2026 at 6:18:33 PM

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.

by brendoelfrendo

6/11/2026 at 7:29:11 PM

> We didn't need to genetically modify flies [...]

"Involve transgenics" is broad enough cover the intern doing literature reviews on related subjects. The discovery process on an unfamiliar domain is a jargon/term of art minefield, and the phrases that fly past me turn in to shibboleths.

by gopher_space

6/11/2026 at 5:46:40 PM

Is this what ivermectin actually treats? Everything comes full-circle.

by inigyou

6/11/2026 at 5:33:04 PM

They're building a new breeding facility in the US. They can't pull a Don't Look Up on this one because of the powerful business interests they need to placate.

by kevin_thibedeau

6/11/2026 at 4:44:41 PM

[dead]

by tennfown

6/11/2026 at 11:02:10 AM

If we all pass around the hat we can make a bet on Kalshi that they "WONT" do this. Right? That's effective democracy!

by cyanydeez

6/11/2026 at 6:09:47 PM

When I was doing my PhD in bio one of my colleagues developed something called CRISPR gene drive, which had the potential of exterminating species wholesale. There was talk of using it to wipe out mosquito populations.

The riskiness of it was quite high though. Wonder if people will consider reviving it in this case.

by LarsDu88

6/11/2026 at 9:47:12 PM

what is the risk here?

by fl4regun

6/12/2026 at 5:30:44 PM

Unintended consequences of wiping out a species, evolved resistance to the gene drive modifications, accelerated unintended mutation, cross species jumps of the transgene.

by LarsDu88

6/12/2026 at 12:34:22 PM

Other than chronic South America and Libya outbreaks, screwworm has been around forever.

Coupled with SIT, pyrethroid, doramectin, ivermectin, debriding, dressing are just about 100% effective.

Thanks to our enlarged 230-strong Federal-contracted field workers.

by egberts1

6/11/2026 at 6:05:42 PM

Ordinarily, we wouldn't have issues, but seeing as the US is now a full-blown kakistocracy, being run into the ground by know-nothings and mental cases, I don't have much hope of seeing a competent response.

by somelamer567

6/10/2026 at 9:16:55 PM

Apparently they feed larvae a warm slurry

by casey2

6/11/2026 at 6:24:15 PM

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.

by hristov

6/12/2026 at 12:17:42 AM

> This article is misleading because it does not mention Trump or Musk or Doge

The article doesn’t mention those things because you’re wrong about both the facts and the timeline, and you’d know that, had you read the article.

> 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.

True, but a red herring. The first cases of Mexican screwworm were in late 2024 / early 2025 [1]. The current circumstances began long before the current presidential administration (at least 2020), as TFA correctly notes.

> Then, in March 2025, Musk's DOGE cut funding for COPEG, the organization that suppresses the screw worm in Panama.

No. The funding cut was for an unrelated UN agency (FAO) not COPEG [2]. FAO does not implement the fly eradication program, per their own website [3], but partisan critics have purposely confused the two issues, which you can see an example of at [4]. They mention COPEG, then talk about the FAO issue, then don’t mention that the one is unrelated to the other, because they want the reader to confuse the two.

In fact, the administration did not cut funding to COPEG, funding $165M in FY2025, with a supplemental grant of $21M the same year [5].

I have my problems with the current administration, and certainly don’t think they’re innocent here, but this kind of fact-free political backbiting that actively confuses the issue drives me batty.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/mexico-confirms-first...

[2] https://www.agri-pulse.com/articles/22636-bird-flu-screwworm...

[3] https://www.fao.org/animal-health/animal-diseases/new-world-...

[4] https://ticotimes.net/2026/06/06/flesh-eating-fly-that-sprea...

[5] https://www.congress.gov/crs_external_products/IN/HTML/IN125...

by timr

6/12/2026 at 3:25:57 AM

I read the article and I am right about everything other than one not very significant detail. I am probably right about that too.

It is not a red herring that Trump allowed cattle imports from mexico when it was widely known that the screw worm was in mexico. It was a very serious lapse in safety and disease prevention.

Furthermore, DOGE did cut federal funding for programs for monitoring and curtailment of the screw worm in Central America in February 2025, and your own links show that. For example your link [2] says the above sentence almost verbatim. The FAO issue is not unrelated to the to the COPEG issue. The FAO also funded programs for detection and curtailment of the screw worm in central america just like COPEG. They were probably complimentary programs.

I could not find any link that COPEG funding was cut, but then again you showed no evidence that it was not cut. DOGE insisted on secrecy and was very vindictive, so a lot of DOGE cuts are not known and there is no definite public list of DOGE cuts. Furthermore, federal employees are scared. Any cuts to FAO programs would be made public because the FAO is an international organization and their employees are not at risk of being fired by Trump. But COPEG is an US organization and everyone in there will be scared to mention funding cuts to the media.

By the way, your statement that the Tump administration funded COPEG with 165 million in 2025 and a supplemental grant of 21 million is an outright falsehood and it is a falsehood proven by your own link [5]. Your own link [5] says that the 165 million funding came in 2024, not 2025 which would make it something done by the Biden administration. The supplemental 21 million funding came in 2025 but that was for fruit flies, not screw worm producing flies, so it did not go to COPEG.

I wonder, did you not read your own links, or did you know you were saying lies and hope that nobody else will read your links.

So in summary, DOGE did cut funding for screw worm detection and prevention in early 2025. Trump did allow Mexican cattle in the US in early 2025, even though it was known that the screw worm is in Mexico. It is not entirely clear whether DOGE cut funding for COPEG exactly or whether it only cut funding for other non-COPEG screw worm detection and prevention programs, but funding for screw worm detection and prevention was cut.

by hristov

6/12/2026 at 3:41:27 AM

> Your own link [5] says that the 165 million funding came in 2024, not 2025 which would make it something done by the Biden administration.

From the link:

> APHIS received emergency funding of $109.8 million in 2023 and $165 million in 2024 from the Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) for screwworm response activities. In May 2025, USDA announced an additional $21 million transfer of CCC funds to convert an existing fruit-fly-rearing facility in Metapa, Mexico, into a sterile fly-rearing facility.

The Trump administration didn’t start until January of 2025.

If you don’t want to give them credit for funding the project in the current financial year, fine, but then it’s especially dishonest to blame them for “defunding” during the same time period. (Particularly when that’s not true - I cited that explicitly to show that funding was not stopped.)

> I could not find any link that COPEG funding was cut, but then again you showed no evidence that it was not cut.

Other than the part I just quoted for you? The part you obviously read, since you cited it in your comment?

Nobody is arguing with you that the current administration cut funding for FAO. They did. What I’ve shown you is that this is is not the same thing as COPEG, FAO is not the prevention program, and even if it were, the cuts were far too late to have caused a problem that began six years ago.

by timr

6/12/2026 at 3:57:20 AM

Ok at this point you are just spouting gibberish. I will stop responding.

by hristov

6/11/2026 at 4:42:54 AM

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.

by atoav

6/11/2026 at 5:24:57 AM

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

by timr

6/11/2026 at 6:53:50 AM

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.

by jurgenburgen

6/11/2026 at 2:00:38 PM

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.

by timr

6/11/2026 at 6:22:48 PM

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.

by brendoelfrendo

6/11/2026 at 11:03:52 PM

It didn’t happen in less than 2 years. The problem started at least in 2020, and likely long before that.

by timr

6/11/2026 at 5:58:43 PM

The argument is not that cutting funding caused the problem; the argument is that you have to use money to solve the problem.

by biophysboy

6/11/2026 at 11:00:40 PM

…and the current administration is using money to do that. It’s in the article, and I’ve posted links to evidence on multiple sub threads of this thread, which you had to ignore to make this comment.

Y’all are just absolutely fixated on blaming one side for this.

by timr

6/12/2026 at 12:08:00 AM

Two things can be true at once: one group cut funding early 2025, and another group added funding later. The former group, DOGE, was less responsible, and the latter group, USDA, is more responsible. I do not know why I have to ignore the former group to be fair to the latter.

by biophysboy

6/12/2026 at 3:11:29 AM

The point is that you’re trying to blame post-2025 events for a problem that began years ago.

Stop letting partisan politics dominate your thinking. It’s preventing you from seeing the full scope of the problem.

by timr

6/11/2026 at 10:13:38 AM

I'm not sure what your point is here.

Yes, the screwworm problem predates the funding cut. Surely that should prompt an increase or at least a maintenance of existing funding for monitoring programs though, certainly not a decrease.

I think atoav is saying the /stupid consequence/ is the cut in funding itself, not the screwworm resurgence.

by maeglin

6/11/2026 at 2:06:05 PM

> I'm not sure what your point is here.

My point is that the instinct to be partisan on this issue is inane, but also factually incorrect.

> Yes, the screwworm problem predates the funding cut.

Great, so we're agreed that this is at least a bi-partisan problem.

> Surely that should prompt an increase or at least a maintenance of existing funding for monitoring programs though, certainly not a decrease.

Fortunately, it is. This was linked directly from TFA:

https://www.usda.gov/sites/default/files/documents/nws-visit...

by timr

6/11/2026 at 5:56:39 PM

Pointing out legitimate failure of an administration is not partisan -- denying or deflecting that criticism is partisan. The current regime has slashed so many programs based on the flimsiest reasoning (including "my predecessor supported this so therefore I hate it").

I'm more than happy to acknowledge any failures by Dem leadership because I'm not a party member and even if I were I would not let that blind me to the reality of that failure.

by pstuart

6/11/2026 at 8:16:50 PM

An interesting aspect of speaking with republican family members is that they assume democrats are monolithic and will revert to that assumption once enough time has passed. Like, unable to process being told that nobody in the room watches CNN or likes the Clintons.

by gopher_space

6/12/2026 at 2:50:29 PM

I think conservative's brains are wired differently, and there's studies that back that up. They tend to lack empathy, which implies they can't walk in other people's shoes so therefor their assumptions about others are based upon how they themselves think.

I don't write that to demean them, I'd like it if it wasn't so -- this comment is in no way intended to be deragotory.

That said, I think this substantiates the notion that with conservatives "every accusation is a confession", because they can only see the world through their eyes they assume everybody else thinks like them.

by pstuart

6/13/2026 at 10:47:29 PM

I'm of the mind that Rupert Murdoch just found the right way to shout at people who grew up in a certain environment.

by gopher_space

6/11/2026 at 5:55:16 PM

A problem happening eventually is expected. The point of a good program is a layered approach that admits no layer is perfect so you have backups that kick in to minimize the impact of problems. So the problem was emerging in 2022, not great but not a tragedy. Cutting monitoring means we reacted slower and our inability to play with our neighbors well means that we can't coordinate a response quickly or as effectively. Destroying our layered, nuanced policies has real consequences and this is one of them.

by jmward01

6/11/2026 at 5:29:57 PM

Screw worms existing before Trump doesn't make it a bipartisan issue. Trump cut the funding, did Democrats do too? So then no only one party ignored and actively defunded it, making it exactly a partisan issue. Good job trying to cover for trump, it's extra pathetic here

by sanktanglia

6/11/2026 at 6:31:12 AM

it is the admin responsibility to protect its citizens.

has it done anything to prevent/mitigate this? or the opposite?

by mittensc

6/11/2026 at 6:17:14 PM

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

by fanatic2pope

6/11/2026 at 1:24:00 PM

[flagged]

by silexia

6/11/2026 at 6:02:33 PM

It wasn't herds of cattle moving through the jungles of Central America that likely helped the screwworm breach the barrier we'd been maintaining for decades. It was mass human migration. Once they managed to move north any animal was a potential host, not just commercial critters.

And even then it probably could've been held at bay and fought back south, except Mexico in particular was extremely sensitive about any suggestion they might not have everything completely under control.

Even so, the US started contingency plans a while ago just in case, and construction of the new facility. The comments here are quick to try to take a jab at the government but short of nuking southern Mexico from sea to glowing sea once the screwworms breached the line, and that breach wasn't US territory, don't know how this was ever going to play out differently unless the locals at every step of the way stepped up.

by mrngld

6/11/2026 at 7:12:54 PM

> It was mass human migration.

[citation needed]

Humans generally seek treatment when infected with some horrible parasite, which would result in said parasite getting killed before propagating. Even for incredibly poor people - AFAICS screwworm is rather painful. You're not gonna carry that.

by eqvinox

6/11/2026 at 5:24:52 PM

Tariffs would not stop the screw worm, which lives half of its life as a winged fly.

by snowwrestler

6/11/2026 at 5:58:06 PM

A fly that naturally spreads one mile per day does not travel from Panama to Texas in four years.

by paconbork

6/11/2026 at 7:21:59 PM

365*4=1420

Distance from Panama to Texas is like 1700 miles.

It's not a large difference, wouldn't need much unnatural transport.

by squibonpig

6/11/2026 at 6:02:31 PM

Maybe it came by a faster method.

by undersuit

6/11/2026 at 6:21:24 PM

northward movement of herds are already banned between mexico and the usa because of screwworms, so tariffs are irrelevant. Also transmission also occurs through wildlife so banning that is also not enough.

by Aefiam

6/11/2026 at 3:54:55 PM

>We have had our access to medications for livestock severely curtailed over recent years.

Oh no, tell me it's not ivermectin...

by BobaFloutist

6/11/2026 at 5:45:06 PM

Ivermectin is a very potent drug against parasites. That's probably why it worked so well in third world countries to "treat" COVID-- It didn't affect the virus but it did reduce the immune burden on the body by getting rid of other stuff

by readthenotes1

6/11/2026 at 6:00:03 PM

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.

by ifyoubuildit

6/11/2026 at 6:57:38 PM

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.

by BobaFloutist

6/11/2026 at 6:26:43 PM

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.

by skolskoly

6/11/2026 at 7:02:32 PM

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.

by BobaFloutist

6/11/2026 at 6:04:42 PM

Ivermectin is readily given to livestock. Sheep even get immersed in a bath of it, you can buy sheep drench in the same farm supply store you'll find the apple flavored ivermectin paste for horses.

by undersuit

6/11/2026 at 5:19:35 PM

It is

by GenerocUsername

6/11/2026 at 5:58:13 PM

> If we had tariffs, this northward movement of herds would not happen.

Please explain how that would work.

by pstuart

6/11/2026 at 8:48:00 PM

So, you're proposing a tariff on wildlife that migrate across the border?

Gonna need one helluva tall border wall to stop the birds.

by IAmBroom

6/11/2026 at 5:31:18 PM

Ahh yes tariffs will solve this problem,how's it doing solving all those other problems?

by sanktanglia