Some folks are posting about the regular flights over Panama, and I’ve seen talk about ending screwworm with a “gene drive”, but I also feel that it doesn’t feel necessary.

But a third option I don’t see talked about a lot: finish the job. We could drop sterile flies all over the USA and Mexico all the way into panama with 1950s tech. We have drones now, surely some inexpensive paper planes shoved out of the back of hercs could cover roughly all of south america for fairly cheap.

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throwup238 6 days ago | parent [-]

There is no finishing the job. Screwworm flies have tons of reservoirs in the jungles of Central America that aren’t practical to eliminate for logistical and ecological reasons. We can only control the population in agriculturally important areas by constantly releasing the sterile male flies every year. Whenever we stop the releases, the flies bounce back in a few years.

	▲	rdl 6 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		The durable reservoirs are in South America, not Central America. We actually eradicated it (at least essentially) all the way down to the Darien Gap.
	▲	amoshebb 6 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		See I guess I find broadside “impractical” dissatisfying. Could a few cargo ships be converted into floating fly farm aircraft carriers on either coast, maybe another in the amazon, and then just use a hundred reaper drone type things to do a creeping barrage? This must be within the budget of even a modest nation state.