May 27, 2020 06:25 AM
(This post was last modified: May 27, 2020 06:50 AM by C C.)
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/arch...ma/611026/
EXCERPTS: The Florida Keys are a place where deer stand next to children at school-bus stops. They lounge on lawns. [...] Bucks started swinging their heads erratically, as if trying to shake something loose. Then wounds opened on their heads -- big, gaping wounds that exposed white slabs of bone. Something was eating the deer alive.
That something, lab tests would later confirm, was the New World screwworm, a parasite supposed to have been eradicated from the United States half a century ago. No one in the Keys had ever seen it. If you had asked an old-time Florida rancher though, he might have told you boyhood stories of similarly disfigured and dying cattle. In those days, screwworms found their way into cattle through any opening in the skin: the belly buttons of newborn calves, scratches from barbed wire, even a tick bite. Then they feasted.
Screwworms once killed millions of dollars’ worth of cattle a year in the southern U.S. Their range extended from Florida to California, and they infected any living, warm-blooded animal: not only cattle but deer, squirrels, pets, and even the occasional human.
[...] For untold millennia, screwworms were a grisly fact of life in the Americas. In the 1950s, however, U.S. ranchers began to envision a new status quo. They dared to dream of an entire country free of screwworms. ... The eradication was a resounding success. But the story does not end there. Containing a disease is one thing. Keeping it contained is another thing entirely, as the coronavirus pandemic is now so dramatically demonstrating.
[...] To get the screwworms out, the USDA to this day maintains an international screwworm barrier along the Panama-Colombia border. The barrier is an invisible one, and it is kept in place by constant human effort. Every week, planes drop 14.7 million sterilized screwworms over the rainforest that divides the two countries. A screwworm-rearing plant operates 24/7 in Panama. Inspectors cover thousands of square miles by motorcycle, boat, and horseback, searching for stray screwworm infections north of the border. The slightest oversight could undo all the work that came before.
The insect is relentless in its search for hosts. Those who fight it must be relentless too.
[...] The U.S. government’s decision to eradicate screwworms in Central America was ultimately about money. Protecting American livestock by dropping sterile flies over the narrow 50-mile Isthmus of Panama is cheaper than maintaining a barrier, even a virtual one, along the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border.
[...] The screwworm program costs $15 million a year, a small fraction of the estimated $796 million a year that it saves American farmers. (That estimate, from 1996, is equivalent to $1.3 billion in today’s dollars.) Still, the program is constantly looking for ways to cut costs.
[...] In late 2016, when screwworms showed up in the Florida Keys, experts immediately suspected that they had come from Cuba. The U.S.-led eradication program had never reached the island -- the two countries weren’t exactly on good terms ... Cuban screwworm experts ... agreed that their island was the likely source of the Keys outbreak.
[...] But in August 2017, strange stories started to circulate about American diplomats in Cuba. They were falling ill, from mysterious and unconfirmed “sonic attacks.” In response, the U.S. withdrew its nonessential staff from the country and expelled two Cuban diplomats. Cuban scientists stopped replying to the Americans’ emails about screwworms... (MORE - details)
EXCERPTS: The Florida Keys are a place where deer stand next to children at school-bus stops. They lounge on lawns. [...] Bucks started swinging their heads erratically, as if trying to shake something loose. Then wounds opened on their heads -- big, gaping wounds that exposed white slabs of bone. Something was eating the deer alive.
That something, lab tests would later confirm, was the New World screwworm, a parasite supposed to have been eradicated from the United States half a century ago. No one in the Keys had ever seen it. If you had asked an old-time Florida rancher though, he might have told you boyhood stories of similarly disfigured and dying cattle. In those days, screwworms found their way into cattle through any opening in the skin: the belly buttons of newborn calves, scratches from barbed wire, even a tick bite. Then they feasted.
Screwworms once killed millions of dollars’ worth of cattle a year in the southern U.S. Their range extended from Florida to California, and they infected any living, warm-blooded animal: not only cattle but deer, squirrels, pets, and even the occasional human.
[...] For untold millennia, screwworms were a grisly fact of life in the Americas. In the 1950s, however, U.S. ranchers began to envision a new status quo. They dared to dream of an entire country free of screwworms. ... The eradication was a resounding success. But the story does not end there. Containing a disease is one thing. Keeping it contained is another thing entirely, as the coronavirus pandemic is now so dramatically demonstrating.
[...] To get the screwworms out, the USDA to this day maintains an international screwworm barrier along the Panama-Colombia border. The barrier is an invisible one, and it is kept in place by constant human effort. Every week, planes drop 14.7 million sterilized screwworms over the rainforest that divides the two countries. A screwworm-rearing plant operates 24/7 in Panama. Inspectors cover thousands of square miles by motorcycle, boat, and horseback, searching for stray screwworm infections north of the border. The slightest oversight could undo all the work that came before.
The insect is relentless in its search for hosts. Those who fight it must be relentless too.
[...] The U.S. government’s decision to eradicate screwworms in Central America was ultimately about money. Protecting American livestock by dropping sterile flies over the narrow 50-mile Isthmus of Panama is cheaper than maintaining a barrier, even a virtual one, along the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border.
[...] The screwworm program costs $15 million a year, a small fraction of the estimated $796 million a year that it saves American farmers. (That estimate, from 1996, is equivalent to $1.3 billion in today’s dollars.) Still, the program is constantly looking for ways to cut costs.
[...] In late 2016, when screwworms showed up in the Florida Keys, experts immediately suspected that they had come from Cuba. The U.S.-led eradication program had never reached the island -- the two countries weren’t exactly on good terms ... Cuban screwworm experts ... agreed that their island was the likely source of the Keys outbreak.
[...] But in August 2017, strange stories started to circulate about American diplomats in Cuba. They were falling ill, from mysterious and unconfirmed “sonic attacks.” In response, the U.S. withdrew its nonessential staff from the country and expelled two Cuban diplomats. Cuban scientists stopped replying to the Americans’ emails about screwworms... (MORE - details)