from otters_raft@lemmy.ca to world@lemmy.world on 03 Jun 23:00
https://lemmy.ca/post/45367356
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.
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Yes, they’re increasing their spread to the north… But “speeding” is a bit clickbaity there Atlantic… 🤷♂️ 🤦♀️ 🤡
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.
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.
There was once a writing prompts story on reddit. The fifth horseman called Kyle. If anyone can, please repost it here. It was very good.
I vote for him.
Think I found it The prompt itself called him Kyle so not sure which response you had in mind.
This one is the top comment:
That’s the one! Thanks.
Shouldn’t it be “he consulted his 4th brother”? Unless there’s one we don’t know about… yet.
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.
Death and “decay” right? The little dust motes, the stray sock on your chair, the mold in your shower, the grey hair on your head, the new wrinkle near your eye, the new ache in your knee, the yellowing family photos, the moment when you can’t quite remember your nephews name.
The little things that fall apart until that one day you just… stop.
Sorta fun related fact, in the original text Death is actually the only one who has a name at all, the rest have just been inferred based on historical context.
See section “the Pale Horse”
It’s called Entropy and ironically it is also responsible for life.
A wall tends to fall apart (and not the other way around) because these individual pieces have greater degrees of freedom (of movement) than the wall itself. Living beings, through their exchanges with the environment, breathing, consuming and excreting, end up increasing the degrees of freedom of the matter in their vicinity.
In more concise words:
“Life, as a highly organized system, exists in a state of relatively low entropy, while the universe as a whole is constantly moving towards higher entropy (more disorder) according to the second law of thermodynamics. It may seem paradoxical, a violation of a fundamental law of physics, but life actually increases the overall entropy of the universe as it utilizes energy and resources to maintain its own order, eventually releasing waste and heat back into the environment.”
In short, life ultimately increases movement, transformation, decay, disorder and thus death.
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It’s almost like iron age peasants weren’t the best people to write stories about the machinations of the universe
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
USDA links:
www.aphis.usda.gov/…/screwworm
www.aphis.usda.gov/…/outbreak-central-america
Ooh here she comes… Watch out boys, she’ll chew you up!
She only comes out at night, though.
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
obviously this is an ancient organism, but the fuel for it to ravage has never existed on this planet at this scale, it's a tinderbox of living tissue.
Plus we’re changing the climate to encourage its migration north.
So why is the “wall” not working anymore? Do we have a scientific explanation?
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.
please stop playing plague inc with the world
Plagues are constantly happening as pathogens & pest continuously mutate. It’s a constant risk to ourselves and everything we eat.
That’s not what happened. It’s good old human getting lazy and pandemic delays that allowed them past the Darien Gap. Followed by good old human smuggling cattle north into Mexico that made them move so fast.
Maybe they learned to swim…
Thanks
Just in time for the new Kurtzgesagt video about them
There is already one or you’re expecting one soon?
I was talking about this one
Someone posted it down below. I just hadn’t seen that comment, yet. Thank you for providing a link!
Half as Interesting did one almost a year ago.
there’s also a more in-depth video by tom scott on a similar type of problem with an almost identical solution
Please no
Don’t worry fam we got the best team on this situation with the best leadership…and…oh shit never mind.
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”
You really are Canadian. That was more polite than we deserved.
Why you mad at Mexico?
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.
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
firstcoastnews.com/…/77-cc1136f8-ed6b-44a5-9848-6…
Dont click, you have been warned.
*is from NA* fuck
deleted
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”???
It’s the worms talking for him. He’s like that guy from Nightmare before Christmas.
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.
Apologies, I never intended to sound ableist. I see now how my comment came across.
I didn’t think you meant to, and I wasn’t trying to be accusatory. It’s a pretty fair assumption to think he messed himself up, judging by his…colorful habits.
All you need to do is look at the man… His face looks like an old catcher’s mitt
Popped American football lookin ass
A balloon full of jam
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
You guys are screwed
Bye-bye US, hope you like getting eaten by worms
Serves them right for all the horrific factory farming of animals. The density of them surely must have increased their spread.
the fucking what?
A worm that screws you
Anybody who wants more info on this can watch this video youtu.be/zxq60I5RSW8
From the one and only Kurzgesagt
Goodbye US dairy and meat industry. Hope it collapses US agriculture.
Gold thing we have the most incompotent administration in history to deal with this one.
We need to send them down there, the leaders need to see things firsthand in the screwworm swamps.
The USDA was certainly not spared the doge axe, they closed offices all along what will soon be the battlefront in this war.
New rfk jr companions (possibly NSFW)
youtu.be/kswcYfOtosk
Oh no, anyway
Turns out the worms don’t care about borders, and we shouldn’t have stopped at an imaginary line to save a few bucks.
It was a very well run and thought out practical plan, it was also cut by doge in breeding season.
Rather go back to the bird flu please.