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Comment by silexia | Hacker News Reader

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It wasn't herds of cattle moving through the jungles of Central America that likely helped the screwworm breach the barrier we'd been maintaining for decades. It was mass human migration. Once they managed to move north any animal was a potential host, not just commercial critters.

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.

> It was mass human migration.

[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.

Tariffs would not stop the screw worm, which lives half of its life as a winged fly.

A fly that naturally spreads one mile per day does not travel from Panama to Texas in four years.

365*4=1420

Distance from Panama to Texas is like 1700 miles.

It's not a large difference, wouldn't need much unnatural transport.

Maybe it came by a faster method.

northward movement of herds are already banned between mexico and the usa because of screwworms, so tariffs are irrelevant. Also transmission also occurs through wildlife so banning that is also not enough.

>We have had our access to medications for livestock severely curtailed over recent years.

Oh no, tell me it's not ivermectin...

Ivermectin is a very potent drug against parasites. That's probably why it worked so well in third world countries to "treat" COVID-- It didn't affect the virus but it did reduce the immune burden on the body by getting rid of other stuff

Are you saying this because you only recognize the name from breathless covid propaganda? Or because you know ivermectin is pretty important in livestock management.

Both! I think it would be unfortunate if a valuable deworming drug was difficult to access in an acute worm crisis because it had became unexpectedly politically salient from an crisis that did not involve worms.

https://web.archive.org/web/20220202042136/https://www.fda.g... https://www.tga.gov.au/safety/safety-monitoring-and-informat...

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.

I disagree, but I would also have a similar reaction if it turned out that toilet-paper supply chain issues left over from the pandemic were going to affect our ability to manage screwworms, and that particular overreaction was non-partisan.

Ivermectin is readily given to livestock. Sheep even get immersed in a bath of it, you can buy sheep drench in the same farm supply store you'll find the apple flavored ivermectin paste for horses.

It is

> If we had tariffs, this northward movement of herds would not happen.

Please explain how that would work.

The herds would not have been moved north to feed Americans very low cost South American beef.

So, you're proposing a tariff on wildlife that migrate across the border?

Gonna need one helluva tall border wall to stop the birds.

The screw worm rode on cattle trucks on top of the cattle.

Ahh yes tariffs will solve this problem,how's it doing solving all those other problems?

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