[madaxe_again]

It seems like there’s a pretty strong parallel with the failure of the screw worm eradication programme. It just became a thing we did, rather than the absolute miracle it was - like vaccination - and then from complacency grows suspicion, for again, as you say, few people alive remember how it was.

[Avshalom]

Well the screw worm thing happened because Elon Musk hired a bunch of twitter nazis to put the government through a wood chipper.

This is the end result of decades snake oil moguls empowered by orin hatch and then turbo charged by people being furious that they weren't allowed to go to TGI Fridays for six months.

[arjie]

I don't think that's true. Supply-chain issues caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and response were probably a big factor - or so I've read, I'm not an expert. In any case, by 2024 (pre-DOGE), new-world screw-worm fly had breached the Panama boundary where we can feasibly keep it contained with a fixed on-going effort. I remember because some time during the pandemic I learned about the thing from someone linking a much older article in the Atlantic[1].

0: https://web.archive.org/web/20240218010527/https://www.fas.u...

1: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/05/flesh-ea...

[WarOnPrivacy]

> This is the end result of decades snake oil moguls empowered by orin hatch

What did Hatch do (I mostly know him as the paid servant of the copyright industry)?

[cptroot]

This is likely about Orin Hatch's dedication to the idea of a "balanced federal budget", to be paid for with program cuts instead of taxation.

[Avshalom]

Oh no, he's just straight up the guy that keeps it legal to sell cyanide-rich apricot kernels as anti-cancer meds*

*statement not evaluated by the FDA

[Avshalom]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietary_Supplement_Health_and_...