We Are So Screwwormed!

The screwworms are coming!

Let’s face it, we all knew deep down that if an invader whose name evoked images of something small, phallic, and limp were to make its way toward the United States, it could only happen during the Trump administration. The Secret Service must have considered “Screwworm” as a codename for dozens of men in the President’s orbit, though they may be keeping it in reserve for Matt Gaetz’s inevitable return. Odds are high that Gaetz already has a similar nickname in Snapchat conversations among high school girls in Florida.

Ask a tech bro what he thinks a screwworm is and he might guess that it’s a piece of malicious code written by Elon Musk and thus unlikely to perform its intended function. Pete Hegseth, who has searched in vain for a bottle of tequila with a worm in it, is probably wondering if this is the worm of his dreams. After all, he heard that the invading horde of screwworms is making it’s way north through southern Mexico, and everyone knows that’s where fentanyl, job-stealing freeloaders, and tequila come from. Kristi Noem is likely setting up a photo op in front of a cell full of the first captured screwworms. She imagines them to be brown and tattooed. If they are furry like caterpillars, she’ll have the Salvadoran jailers shave them for her PR shot.

Want to scare your teenager into celibacy? Just mention that the country is spending at least $30 million to combat the flesh-eating New World Screwworm. From the name, I think you can imagine how it’s acquired, Honey. It’s spreading here from warmer climates, just like the fungus in The Last of Us. Donald Trump hasn’t even said anything like, “It’ll be gone by the Fourth of July,” the way he did with COVID, so it must be serious. The Chinese are suppressing screwworm information on TikTok. Boomers and GenX are ignoring it because, as every teenager knows, they stopped liking sex years ago. If your genitals sometimes itch, it may mean that you’re more susceptible to screwworms. Your grandmother’s generation wiped them out in the ‘60s, but now they are back, just like measles.

Don’t tell Pete Hegseth, but neither the screwworm nor the tequila worm are actually worms; they are larva. The tequila worm was a moth larva, and it was in mezcal, not tequila. Also, it was a marketing gimmick: High-quality mezcal has no “worm.”

Don’t tell your teenager, but the screwworm is actually a fly larva, not a sexually transmitted infection. You might casually mention to your teen that the screwworm’s scientific name is Cochliomyia hominivorax,¹ and hominivorax translates to man-eating. This should cause your young Ophelia to all but get herself to a nunnery.²

The screwworm’s full name is the New World screwworm fly. We lazy humans have shortened it to just screwworm, so the larva is more famous than its parents.³ You might not even notice a female screwworm fly depositing hundreds of eggs in your tick bite, wound, or body opening, but the larvae feasting on your living tissue and then popping out of your skin would be hard to ignore. It’s not just laziness that causes us to put the “worm” before the fly.

The United States eradicated the screwworm back in the 1960s, a time when North Dakota’s Badass Grandmas and their generation were kicking ass and guaranteeing a Gilead-free future for their daughters and granddaughters. Now the fight has resumed on both of those fronts, and the federal government is all-in on defeating the New American screwworm fly. “Secretary Rollins Announces Bold Plan to Combat New World Screwworm’s Northward Spread,” proclaims a USDA press release in which Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins sounds, at points, more like a wartime Secretary of Defense than an Ag Secretary:

“The United States has defeated NWS before and we will do it again,” said Secretary Rollins. “We do not take lightly the threat NWS poses to our livestock industry, our economy, and our food supply chain. The United States government will use all resources at its disposal to push back NWS, and today’s announcement of a domestic strategy to bolster our border defenses is just the beginning. We have the proven tools, strong domestic and international partnerships, and the grit needed to win this battle.”

The most effective way to combat the screwworm is by releasing a huge number of sterile male screwworm flies into the environment. This was the method used in the 1960s, and it has remained in use since then in Panama, where a sterile fly production facility jointly run by Panama and the United States produces over 100 million sterile flies per week. The United States is building an $8.5 million fly dispersal facility at Moore Air Base in Texas and considering an accompanying sterile fly production facility that could produce up to 300 million sterile flies per week. The cost of that facility would be $300 million to $600 million, and construction would take two to three years. The USDA has already invested in another facility south of the border, according to the press release:

USDA’s recent $21 million expenditure went toward renovating an existing fruit fly production facility in Metapa, Mexico, which will provide an additional 60-100 million sterile flies a week to stop the spread, on top of the over 100 million already produced in Panama. This will result in at least 160 million flies per week.

I love that they did the math for us: (60-100 million) + (over 100 million) = (at least 160 million). Assuming we do build the new production facility in Texas, the upfront costs alone for this effort will be at least $329.5 million. Operating costs will be significant as well. I imagine it will take a lot of employees to perform 460 million tiny fly vasectomies every week.⁴

What we don’t have for the New World screwworm problem is a free-market solution. We have socialized a cost that will profit some Americans, like ranchers, far more than others. I am okay with that. The same is true of USDA programs to stop the spread of rabies or of crop diseases like leaf rust or powdery mildew. It would not be inaccurate to think of these programs as indirect subsidies.

Looking at the first four pages containing the forty newest USDA news releases, I noticed that 33 out of the 40 headlines mentioned Secretary Collins. That struck me as unusual, so I decided to look at releases from the same time last year. Unfortunately, there was no link for archived news releases.

I knew that USDA news releases existed before the current administration, so I used the Internet Archive Wayback Machine to visit last November’s version of the USDA press releases page. On that page was a conspicuous “press release archives” link. I looked at 40 press releases from this time last year. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack’s name was mentioned in exactly one press-release headline. Most of them began with “USDA . . .”

Uncommon self-promotion is a common vice in this administration. It’s more than self-promotion, though. It is a subtle declaration that it is not the government or USDA bringing relief to your community or beginning a program from which you will benefit; it is Brooke Rollins.

Buy Trygve a coffee (or fly repellant)!

If you are wondering whether programs to control damaging pests and invasive species were affected by DODGE cuts, yes, they were. Essential employees in USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) were fired, and the agency had to rush to rehire them or find replacements. Only one part of that SNAFU went on DOGE’s books, though.

Finally, who knew that sterile males were such an effective method of birth control?