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.
How is "They were almost certainly transported via unchecked northward migration of people and animals." a consequence of loss of trust in science?
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.
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.
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!
See sibling threads.
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.
Also they don't genetically modify flies they still just irradiate the larva.
"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.
[1]: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/05/flesh-ea...
[2]: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2025/05/screwwor...
The riskiness of it was quite high though. Wonder if people will consider reviving it in this case.
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.
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.
> 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 [3], but partisan critics have purposely confused the two issues, which you can see an example of at [4].
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, 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...
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.
Y’all are just absolutely fixated on blaming one side for this.
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.
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.
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...
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.
has it done anything to prevent/mitigate this? or the opposite?
If we had tariffs, this northward movement of herds would not happen. And American farmers who have to follow high minimum wage rules and strict environmental rules could compete.
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.
[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.
Distance from Panama to Texas is like 1700 miles.
It's not a large difference, wouldn't need much unnatural transport.
Oh no, tell me it's not ivermectin...
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.
Please explain how that would work.
Gonna need one helluva tall border wall to stop the birds.