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Hey there! Today I want to talk about how Elon Musk single handedly canceled an important US government program, leading to an international disaster that will affect far too many people. That’s right, he actually deleted our program combatting Ebola and now there’s a deadly outbreak! Oh wait, sorry, that was last month. THIS month’s story is about how now we have to worry about screwworm again.
In case you missed it, Elon Musk is now the world’s first, and hopefully last, trillionaire, despite the fact that he has failed at everything he has done in the past, like, 15 years. Because that’s how you make more money: have money, and then it makes more money. For rich people, money is like tribbles. Just shove some into a bulkhead, go good in the holodeck for a bit, and when you come back, BAM, more money. Or tribbles or whatever.
But anyway, screwworm! Quick warning, this is going to be a bit gross if you dislike bugs and, um, bugs that, like, eat you. Up until this month, most Americans had never heard of screwworm, because we eradicated it back in 1966. It’s a nasty little parasite with a lifecycle that requires its maggots to feed on living tissue. Normally when we think of maggots chomping down on flesh, if we think of that at all, it’s how they prefer necrotic flesh, which is why they’ve been used to clean wounds. Not the humble screwworm blowfly, though: they like to lay their considerable amount of eggs in or near open wounds on (usually) mammals so that their offspring can attack the flesh that’s nice and fresh. Fresh flesh. And they get the name “screwworm” because if you try to disturb them while they’re chowing down, they “screw” down deeper into the body and cause even more damage, which sometimes leads directly to the death of the infected animal.
Oh, and they don’t JUST target wounds: they can also screw in through the eyes and the perineum. So now you have a fun new way to wish pain upon your enemy: may you experience an eternity of blowfly larvae burrowing ever deeper into your taint.
It’s actually pretty rare for screwworms to set up shop in humans, and pretty common for them to go after our cows: they killed millions of dollars of livestock, which is why in the 1950s the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) worked with scientists to release a huge amount of sterile male blowflies across our southern states, knowing that females only mate once, which collapsed their population. Back in the 20th century, we had a federal government that understood that horrific diseases do not honor international boundaries, and so we worked with authorities in Mexico, Central America, and Jamaica to set up similar programs that eventually pushed the screwworm all the way down to the Darién Gap, a 50-mile stretch of remote and dense rainforest where Panama meets Colombia.
In the decades since, this international coalition kept a close eye on screwworm infections to ensure that it was kept in check. As Sarah Zhang described in The Atlantic back in 2020, inspectors scoured the area in boats and on horseback and motorcycle, and to make sure the little bastards wouldn’t come back, we set up a sterile screwworm factory in Panama and dumped 14.7 million of them over the Darién Gap every week. EVERY SINGLE WEEK! For decades! But the US government kept up their part of the coalition, because protecting that 60-mile stretch of rainforest was a hell of a lot easier and cheaper than protecting the entire southern border of the United States.
So, what went wrong? Why is the average American now cursed to once again know what the fuck a screwworm is?
Well. I mean. Yeah. You already know.
Okay, it’s not JUST the fault of the Republicans. I mean, there’s always a bit more nuance. Well, not always, these days, but…you know what, I’m just going to give you the little bit of nuance anyway. In 2023, screwworms started popping up around central America, in part thanks to climate change making the environment hotter and more friendly to them, but also because of illegal movement of infected animals, as described in this study from April of 2025 that warned the parasites were dangerously close to Mexico. I guess peer review held that one up for a bit because they made it to Mexico in November of 2024, at which point Biden’s USDA launched an emergency plan to ramp up sterile fly production along the border with Mexico while banning the movement of bison, horses, and cattle coming into the US. They expected the new facilities to be fully operational within 18 months, which would be…ah, now.
Could Biden have done more to stop the northward march of screwworms, starting back in 2023? Maybe! I don’t know. I do know that the Trump Administration’s plan to blame Biden for the current infestation spreading across the American South is extremely stupid, because not only did Trump not follow through on his predecessor’s plans to stop screwworms from crossing into the US, but he actively hastened their arrival. Shocking, I know.
To start, in the spring of 2025, Elon Musk, the world’s first trillionaire (derogatory) fired 15,000 USDA workers, or about 15% of the workforce. Then, Trump canceled 5,300 grants and programs from the U.S. Agency of International Development,, including a screwworm monitoring project.
Politico reported this week that they held up funding for building a planned screwworm facility in Texas while also delaying a second facility and a “$100 million research initiative designed to create new tools to slow the screwworm’s advance was also delayed” and so while the Biden administration’s original plan would have had everything working already, we are still at least four months away from producing a fraction of the sterile flies needed to combat this problem.
The Trump Administration is, of course, blaming this on Biden’s policy of “open borders,” as if that were a real thing that happened and as if it meant that people came flooding into the US with vast herds of cattle.
This is particularly amusing because, as I said, the Biden Administration BANNED THE IMPORT OF BISON, HORSES, AND CATTLE FROM MEXICO IN 2024, oh, and Donald Trump LIFTED THAT BAN IN FEBRUARY OF 2025. It was Trump! Trump did open borders!!! Open borders for fucking screwworms!!!
So yeah, there’s really no upshot, here. It’s going to be a painful few years while some adults try to fix this, and in the meantime, have you considered going vegan? Just throwing it out there! There isn’t one known case of a screwworm fly laying eggs in a veggie burger.
