Vox: Maryland Man Bringing Screwworm Back From El Salvador Is A Warning Sign

It’s literally one guy who visited El Salvador (no mention that I can find if he’s a US citizen or something else)

A flesh-eating parasite is at our borders. What happens if it spreads?

A Maryland resident who traveled to El Salvador came home last month with an unwelcome souvenir: larvae of the New World screwworm burrowing in their flesh.

The patient has since recovered from the painful parasite, and Maryland health officials confirmed that there’s no sign of transmission to anyone else. But the case is historic: It’s the first time in more than half a century that a human in the US has been infected by a screwworm.

On its own, it’s a medical oddity — a one-off, travel-linked case that doesn’t pose a direct risk to Americans. But it’s also a warning sign of a much bigger threat creeping toward US borders. One that could rattle the backbone of American agriculture.

For the past two decades, screwworms were held at a distance by an invisible barrier along the Panama-Colombia border by a joint US-Panama program that regularly floods the region with sterile flies. That barrier has, however, cracked. Since 2023, screwworm has resurged through Central America and into Mexico.

That’s a pretty quick jump from one dude to ZOMG!, eh? We learn later that perhaps it was a Bad Idea for the Biden admin to pretty much invite all those illegals to rush towards the US border, bringing cattle along the way, which were infected with screwworm.

Experts say that the context has shifted in the last 50 years. Climate change is warming habitats, increasing possible places where screwworms can thrive. Industrial livestock farming has scaled up enormously, meaning a single outbreak could speak through herds faster than ever. Meanwhile, the Trump administration pushed out around 15,000 USDA employees and terminated a screwworm monitoring project. We have newer, better tools to fight off these, but those are yet to be approved. And parasites don’t wait for paperwork.

Climate doom! Also, TDS

Smuggling of cattle through Central America seeded fresh outbreaks in new regions, and climate shifts — higher temperatures and humidity — aided their spread. By spring 2025, Mexico was reporting detections as far north as Oaxaca and Veracruz, a stretch of land far wider and difficult to contain than the narrow Darién. COPEG has been running flat out, turning out around 100 million larvae each week. But even at maximum capacity, the plant can only do so much. The screwworm front continued to advance.

Smuggling, or, illegals bringing them? Which has zero do with “climate shifts”.

Earlier this year, the USDA committed $21 million to convert an old fruit-fly plant in Metapa, Mexico, to churn out 60 million to 100 million sterile screwworms weekly to be released in southern Mexico, where the new front is. It’s also building a factory in Edinburg, Texas, with three times that capacity. Congress is trying to lock this in with the STOP Screwworms Act, a bipartisan bill that would formally authorize USDA to build and fund the new Texas facility.

Oh, so the Trump admin is taking actions? Huh. Guess the TDS was unwarranted.

Seriously, all this hyperventilating over one dumbass traveling to El Salvador.