It was failing long before this. The border used to be down by Panama.

smallmancontrov 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

The border didn't magically eradicate the flies on one side. Pushing the border down to the Darien Gap took work, but we did it before and can do it again. The real problem is the gleeful destruction of government capacity to do things like this.

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tptacek 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

Yes, that's true, but the point the parent commenter was making is that recent previous administrations also didn't take this problem seriously.

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smallmancontrov 6 days ago | parent [-]

Who was president in 2020 again?

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stretchwithme 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

I see you are bias-free.

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tptacek 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

You get that there was a president between 2020 and now, right? Nobody is sticking up for Trump; they're just saying, this particular bad thing isn't a DOGE outcome.

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6 days ago | parent | next [-]

[deleted]

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chris_wot 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

If this particular bad thing was bad before DOGE, then it’s far worse under DOGE. It’s a particularly ridiculous argument.

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bbarnett 6 days ago | parent [-]

Knowing how and why a thing happened, is far more important than political grandstanding.

The doge cuts may affect the future of this program, but have absolutely positively nothing to do with the situation now. Nothing. Not a thing.

It is fine to say doge will make this neglect worse, but the neglect happened for a decade.

And that's important. That's vital to understanding why, and how it happened.

And that is absolutely not a ridiculous concept.

	▲	hedora 6 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		They cut funding in March in the middle of it beginning to spread north, and the spread has continued uncontrolled in the months since then. The DOGE cuts directly worsened the current situation. It’s unclear if the initial covid era cuts were performed by Biden or Trump (I can’t find a date or primary source for those).
	▲	tptacek 6 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I don't know about "not a thing"; have to be careful about overcorrecting the other direction. The thing I'm wary about is just shutting down discussion of complicated things as soon as Trump appears. The screwworm situation is interesting!

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6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

[deleted]

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cogman10 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The first sign of spread past panama was seen in Nov 2024. Parasites can spread fast and the US/Mexico needed to react fast to the fact that it spread past panama.

In a critical time when monitoring and action were desperately needed, we eliminated the agency that'd do that.

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literalAardvark 6 days ago | parent [-]

It wasn't a critical time, it was late.

If there had been any political will for this things would have been set in motion since 2023, likely even before that when the reports from the scientists working on control started pouring in.

Blaming a few weeks of funding lapse one year into an outbreak in a control project that's been running for decades is absurd.

From a link in this thread: However, since 2023, cases have been increasing in number and spreading north from Panama to Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Belize, and Mexico.

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asacrowflies 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

Late is still a critical time...perhaps more critical.

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cogman10 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Fair point.

The cost to fight this back will definitely exponentially increase.

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tptacek 6 days ago | parent [-]

Ok, but where did you get that Nov '24 date from? You just agreed with a comment that falsified that claim.

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cogman10 6 days ago | parent [-]

An article I read mentioned that Nov '24 is when the flies were spotted in Mexico. I incorrectly assumed that meant that is when they breached the panama boarder.

So I agree with the commenter that falsified my claim because they are correct, the date of breach was earlier and the time to react was then.

	▲	tptacek 6 days ago \| parent [-]
		Gotcha. Thanks! I was just curious.

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rdl 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

And the Panama border (Darien Gap, specifically) used to be a stronger natural barrier; humans have been crossing it for years, are starting to graze cows within the exclusion zone, etc.