Coming soon to the US!

What amazes me about all of this is that flesh-eating worms were just something I had never thought about. Before my lifetime they took great effort to get them under control and so it was a thing that I didn't even realize existed, but BEFORE that they must've been a problem like this. People were out there just getting their flesh et and I hadn't really seen much mention of it in historical writings of books of the time because it was just a thing everyone dealt with, why talk about it? (not that I'm terribly well read from those periods, but)

Just going to mention this video, of several on the topic.

Why the US Drops 14.7 Million Worms On Panama Every Week

And the website of the site to where they do this from: https://www.copeg.org/en/situacion-actual/

Plus the other facilities which do this: https://www.aphis.usda.gov/animals/animal-health/livestock-and-poultry-disease/sterile-fly-production-dispersal-facilities

It's not as bad as it sounds, right?

RIGHT????

Can't wait for some MAGA terrorist to bring them over to Africa, Europe and Asia for the lulz

The maggots can cause painful, rapidly enlarging deep wounds, which can destroy muscle, cartilage, and bone—even the skull—if not caught quickly.

So glad we have adults in charge of the USA to help us avoid these horrors…….

Didn't trump defund the specific team that was focused on monitoring and addressing this issue?

I'm sure that will totally stabilize already inflated grocery prices.

Isn't there like a giant wild boar population down there too? Nice breeding ground.

Plagues anyone?

The New World screwworm (NWS) fly was once endemic in Mexico—as well as the US. The flies lay hundreds of eggs in the wounds, inflamed tissue, mucous membranes, and orifices of warm-blooded creatures. The resulting maggots hatch within a day and begin ravenously feasting on the living flesh of their victims. While the fly’s maggots generate ghastly, life-threatening wounds in a variety of warm-blooded species, including humans, they’re particularly devastating to livestock.

Amid a decades-long eradication effort, the fly’s populations were wiped out from the US, Mexico, and Central America. This was largely done with massive aerial releases of sterilized male flies, a technique that works because female NWS flies only mate once in their lifespans. Mexico declared NWS eradicated in 2003. Panama declared eradication in 2006 and kept an active, biological barrier along the Darién Gap at the border with Colombia. But in 2022, the barrier was breached, and Mexico began seeing cases in animals in 2024.

Since the breach, there have been more than 36,000 animal cases of NWS in Mexico, with nearly 2,000 active as of August 5, according to the US Department of Agriculture. While human NWS infections—called myiasis—are a small fraction of the overall cases, the infestations can be severe and horrifying. The maggots can cause painful, rapidly enlarging deep wounds, which can destroy muscle, cartilage, and bone—even the skull—if not caught quickly. The wounds pose the risk of irreparable damage, secondary infection, sepsis, and, in extreme cases, death.

Collective problems require collective solutions, America cannot solve this problem with each nation working alone, indeed if even one large "united" nation in the northern part decides to violently flaunt logic everyone will be irreperably harmed.

Since we're on the subject of real life horrors, what happens when the borders of this outbreak overlap the borders of the current ebola outbreak?

This is a real question for any medical professionals in the chat, btw. I believe it's highly likely we'll see spread of the latter beyond Africa given the collapse of US disease control support under the current administration.