The ‘Man-Eater’ Screwworm Is Coming | After a decades-long campaign to beat the parasites down to Panama, they’re speeding back up north. - The Atlantic
The ‘Man-Eater’ Screwworm Is Coming | After a decades-long campaign to beat the parasites down to Panama, they’re speeding back up north. - The Atlantic
After a decades-long campaign to beat the parasites down to Panama, they’re speeding back up north.
The United States has, for 70 years, been fighting a continuous aerial war against the New World screwworm, a parasite that eats animals alive: cow, pig, deer, dog, even human. (Its scientific name, C. hominivorax, translates to “man-eater.”) Larvae of the parasitic fly chew through flesh, transforming small nicks into big, gruesome wounds. But in the 1950s, the U.S. Department of Agriculture laid the groundwork for a continent-wide assault. Workers raised screwworms in factories, blasted them with radiation until they were sterile, and dropped the sterile adult screwworms by the millions—even hundreds of millions—weekly over the U.S., then farther south in Mexico, and eventually in the rest of North America.
The sterile flies proceeded to, well, screw the continent’s wild populations into oblivion, and in 2006, an invisible barrier was established at the Darién Gap, the jungle that straddles the Panama-Colombia border, to cordon the screwworm-free north off from the south. The barrier, as I observed when I reported from Panama several years ago, consisted of planes releasing millions of sterile screwworms to rain down over the Darién Gap every week. This never-ending battle kept the threat of screwworms far from America.
But in 2022, the barrier was breached. Cases in Panama—mostly in cattle—skyrocketed from dozens a year to 1,000, despite ongoing drops of sterile flies. The parasite then began moving northward, at first slowly and then rapidly by 2024, which is when I began getting alarmed emails from those following the situation in Central America. As of this month, the parasite has advanced 1,600 miles through eight countries to reach Oaxaca and Veracruz in Mexico, with 700 miles left to go until the Texas border. The U.S. subsequently suspended live-cattle imports from Mexico.
Central America is shaped like a funnel with a long, bumpy tail that reaches its skinniest point in Panama. Back in the day, the USDA helped pay for screwworm eradication down to Panama out of not pure altruism but economic pragmatism: Establishing a 100-mile screwworm barrier there is cheaper than creating one at the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border. Even after screwworms began creeping up the tail of the funnel recently, the anti-screwworm campaign had one last good chance of stopping them at a narrow isthmus in southern Mexico—after which the funnel grows dramatically wider. It failed. The latest screwworm detections in Oaxaca and Veracruz are just beyond the isthmus.
The brainworm is calling its allies
ahh yes the Pestilence is in good form but my money is on famine, even though a parlay on war and death together has a big payday. Make your bets folks, scared money don't make money.
I know this isn't the time or place. But Death deserves a proper name. It's a weird hill I preach on since figuring it out.
Death comes for us all.
Pestilence - disease, by virus, bacteria, parasite, prion, etc will lead to death.
Famine - starvation, or dehydration, or simply lack of proper nutrition leads to death.
War - violence, man vs man, for reasons unknown, but entirely human made leads to death.
Death - Leads to death? His name should be something else we fear. And what we fear is related to the above. A few names I propose are Mortality, Age, or just Time - we cannot live forever.
Pestilence, TACO Don and the Ketamine Kid. Just waiting on the fourth horseman. This is shaping up to be an amazing year. :p
As scary as the article makes screworms look, that thing doing the calling is way scarier.
Oh, and the worm that died inside its brain once too.
This explains everything going on in the world
Gold thing we have the most incompotent administration in history to deal with this one.
The USDA was certainly not spared the doge axe, they closed offices all along what will soon be the battlefront in this war.
We need to send them down there, the leaders need to see things firsthand in the screwworm swamps.
RFK Jr "Yall hear a new worm just dropped! Gawd damn gotta get me one!" (Insert jackhammered freak shake voice)
you are the first person that I’ve seen to finally mention his voice. Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with his entire vocal box?? How can a person, any person, listen to RFK Jr for any period of time, and think to himself “This person seems to know a lot about health”???
you are the first person that I’ve seen to finally mention his voice. Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with his entire vocal box??
I think most people don’t talk about it because there are plenty of things to complain about with RFK Jr, we don’t have to resort to ableism.
He has a condition called spasmodic dysphonia. Legendary NPR interviewer Diane Rehm also suffered from this condition, which eventually ended her radio career.
I could be wrong, but I don’t think it’s because of his terrible health decisions. It happens to some people.
It's the worms talking for him. He's like that guy from Nightmare before Christmas.
If you do heroine for 15 years like RFK jr did then you’ll suffer actual brain damage which will make you sound like that. Spasmodic dysphonia my ass, maybe shouldn’t have taken all that H eh? His brain worm was keeping the lights on, that dude gave way better advice than the human taco shell that is RFK jr
So why is the "wall" not working anymore? Do we have a scientific explanation?
How screwworms managed to jump the barrier in 2022 is not fully clear. But in the years immediately before, the coronavirus pandemic reportedly created supply-chain snarls at the fly factory in Panama and disrupted regular cattle inspections that might have set off the alarm bells earlier.
Still, the screwworm advanced relatively slowly through Panama and Costa Rica for the first couple of years.
800,000 cattle a year are raised illegally in nature reserves [in Central America] and then smuggled by boat and truck up to Mexico. This allowed the screwworm to spread much faster than it can fly [beginning in 2024]. The line of new screwworm cases followed known smuggling routes
Thanks
Maybe they learned to swim...
Was wondering myself. I'm worried we've done the same thing to these bugs that we did to bacterial pathogens with antibiotics. I.e. we found a REALLY powerful weapon, used it enough to massively alter the survival pressures of the species, but not enough to eradicate it entirely until they just genetically adapt around that new pressure. If some genetic lines of the species were more inclined to radiation resistance or to altered reproduction patterns/sexual selection, then those became the only genetic lines that can propogate. Would be slow at first, but exponential growth is a bitch. There is a finite window of generations to wipe them all out before they're all replaced by the more resistant genetic lines. Super bugs.
Don’t worry fam we got the best team on this situation with the best leadership…and…oh shit never mind.
Turns out the worms don’t care about borders, and we shouldn’t have stopped at an imaginary line to save a few bucks.
Just in time for the new Kurtzgesagt video about them
there's also a more in-depth video by tom scott on a similar type of problem with an almost identical solution
There is already one or you're expecting one soon?
Hey Canadians, you guys still have science up there, right? I got a two-four of Molson or Labatt for ya if you can lend your continental neighbors a hand. Don’t do it for the US, but help out Mexico eh?
Go suck a dick, really- we have been shouting for about 25 years that exactly this was going to happen and you told us "fuck off, you're America's hat"
Eh, I’m from Detroit, we drink Canadian beer and would never speak ill of our southern neighbors. Heck, I grew up watching Hockey Night on CBC and listening to 89x. Can’t speak for the rest of the country though.
But for real, these critters sound scary, and apparently we’re all out of science. Or any sort of common sense. Yeah, we’re fucked.
You really are Canadian. That was more polite than we deserved.
Why you mad at Mexico?
Anybody who wants more info on this can watch this video https://youtu.be/zxq60I5RSW8
From the one and only Kurzgesagt
the fucking what?
A worm that screws you
Ooh here she comes... Watch out boys, she'll chew you up!
She only comes out at night, though.
is this something I should be freaking out about? I'd much rather not wind up with a bunch of larvae-infested wounds that I almost certainly would pick at.
Yes, if you live if NA
Dont click, you have been warned.
Rather go back to the bird flu please.
it will make sense when the way we have treated animals undoes us completely. like a trail of kerosene straight from fire plains to our front doors.
Its important to note this fly has existed for millions of years laying its eggs in the flesh of mammals in the Americas, and that this has little to do with how we treat animals
New rfk jr companions (possibly NSFW)
Goodbye US dairy and meat industry. Hope it collapses US agriculture.
Serves them right for all the horrific factory farming of animals. The density of them surely must have increased their spread.
It’s 1800 miles from Yaviza, Panama to Oaxaca, Mexico, and these little munchers made it in 2 years.
Oaxaca to Brownsville, TX is 766 miles, so the US could see them arrive in a few months. Seems speedy to me.
They were probably brought there through human trade of some sorts. I doubt they covered that range without causing massive issues and destruction on its path in such a short time.
Oh no, anyway
Bye-bye US, hope you like getting eaten by worms