I block DOGE, Trump and Elongated Muskrat as keywords, because Lemmy sometimes thinks it’s AmeriLemmy, and I just don’t care. But the blocks don’t work on comments or pictures. Using Voyager app, anyone have any ideas?
Turn off the phone and go for a walk?
The… what.
You gotta link this through xcancel I need to see the replies lol
Thank you, kind user. Paying dividends already
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Separated at birth?
I’d love to blame this entirely on DOGE and trump but honestly this was a perfect storm that built up over decades.
The screwworm was eradicated from the US a long time ago using sterile fly releases that pushed the population progressively southward until the Darién Gap became the permanent chokepoint. They maintained the barrier there with sterile fly releases and ground monitoring and it worked. It worked so well that the Mission, Texas facility closed in 1981 and the Mexico facility closed in 1999 because there was no longer a need for them.
That success is part of what caused the problem. Complacency set in, and capacity eroded. Then COVID wrecked the monitoring infrastructure. Ground teams couldn’t operate, sterile fly releases got disrupted, and the barrier at the Gap was breached. The flies started moving north again and the program didn’t have the capacity it once did to respond.
DOGE cuts to USDA APHIS in 2025 hit an already compromised program at the worst possible time reduced staffing and funding when they needed to be scaling up emergency sterile fly production and reestablishing the barrier.
So yes, the current administration made it worse. The vulnerability was already there before those cuts, and once COVID broke the barrier there was always a real chance they were going to make it back to the US regardless.
Fuck DOGE and trump though for real, I just cant get on this “its entirely their fault” train.
So trump is just the last in line whose failure was worst.
That still makes it his fault
He was the one that broke it at first too. It’s just Musk that came later and only finished breaking it.
Texas facility closed in 1981 and the Mexico facility closed in 1999 because there was no longer a need for them.
Nah it was a series of overconfidence and underfunding, this is capitalism.
That success is part of what caused the problem. Complacency set in, and capacity eroded.
This part is sort of glossed over. There was a report in 2018 that the Panama facility was in dire need of updates. We were talking about a one time $50M investment and an extra $10-15M a year to hold screwworms at the Darien Gap as they had been for decades. Trump did nothing. It’s easy to blame COVID, but there is a very, very avoidable problem and yes, the blame lies squarely with Trump.
That old lady was standing near the edge of the cliff. The fence was already broken. I pushed her off the edge. You can’t say it’s entirely my fault.
And to be fair, I was wantonly shoving a whole bunch of people, and lots of them didn’t die. The ones who did had some preexisting vulnerability, so not my fault.
so this is another thing that can be traced back to Reagan? lol
well if it wasnt cut, there would be a much faster response than it is now. 1bn likely wont stop the screworms in the long run anyways. since they are coming from the south unabated.
Nuanced perspective with historical context is so good. Thank you for sharing it. This is not sarcasm; it’s authentically good to see.
It’s very refreshing to see something so nuanced actually getting upvoted here.
I thought you said it was “frustrating” seeing some with nuance get upvoted and I appreciated the sarcasm on that and the sincerity in this one
Thank you for the context. Highly appreciated! I had gathered the gradual decline in funding and surveillance from this publication but they didn’t really talk about the damages done by COVID or DOGE.
I dunno, this just seems like the entire narrative that government ran things are bad. I mean sure everything was crumbling when Trump started actively breaking things with Doge. But the reason they were crumbling before that was Republican policy and Covid was absolutely Trump’s fault from dismantling the programs that monitored pandemics.
Any government run system needs something to trim the bloat down. Otherwise there is nothing to stop it becoming dangerous. Capitalism relies on profit motives to do this. It works, to an extent.
The problem comes with how to trim. E.g. this programme. Once the barrier was established, it could be trimmed. The fact it worked for 25 years after is proof of this. This (in theory) would free up resources for more critical tasks. The catch is that it needed to hard protect the barrier itself. It also needed the capability to rapidly scale back up. It seems that that was trimmed too, leading to the current crisis.
A dam is a good analogy. It takes a lot of resources to build one. But far less to run and maintain it. You also need the option for emergency maintenance, but that can be shared with other dams or construction projects, when not needed.
The first trim got rid of the construction budget. DOGE got rid of the maintenance budget. Now the dam needs rebuilding, not just maintaining.
Any government run system needs something to trim the bloat down. Otherwise there is nothing to stop it becoming dangerous
What does this even mean. Sounds like slippery slope to me.
No department, government or commercial likes giving up resources, once it has them. This can cause them to become quite inefficient.
In commercial companies, this is corrected for by financial pressures (imperfectly). In government systems there is no obvious mechanism. Instead it’s a lot more ad-hoc. This allows for things like “starving the beast” to break government functions. Conversely it allows for a lot of public money being funneled into private hands.
A better option is to have systems in place to control spending. Critically, those systems need to have people who understand what is being done. They simultaneously allow for reduction in spending when appropriate (or at least stop run away), but stop the chainsaw to the knees approach (e.g. DOGE under musk).
A good example would be something like the UKs NHS NICE (National institute for Clinical Excellence). They keep drug prices under control in the NHS. They are powerful enough to give pause to the drugs companies, they stop the government from going “chainsaw massacre” directly and they keep the NHS efficient in their area. They are also small enough to not bloat themselves as easily.
They act as a 2 way shield. They stop governments sticking their oar in too directly. They also keep the service efficient and updated.
Basically we need localised intelligence to filter what rolls down from higher government, while keeping those below accountable.
In this case, it seems like they over trimmed the science. Some stand down from full height is reasonable, but no mothballed facilities were kept to rapidly spool back up in an emergency.
Okay cool then use that same train of thought to make all those involved pay, not the taxpayers. Musk and Trump too.
Fuck DOGE and trump though for real, I just cant get on this “its entirely their fault” train.
Ah yes, let them blame COVID instead. Because we all know in hindsight that Trump’s response to the pandemic was amazing \s
They’d also cut funding to vaccine and pandemic research in his first term. So it was his fault at more than one step along the way.
I’m GLAD I live in a Country where an ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT can FIRE Hundreds of Thousands of People, KILL Millions of People and DECIMATE my Countries Livestock and in Response we give him TRILLIONS in Taxpayer Dollars!
GLAD ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT FIRE KILL DECIMATE TRILLIONS!
Ya know I’m really glad that your shtick has become so recognizable and accepted on lemmy that other people enjoy it too. I remember back when you’d be down voted like crazy. Sorry to break the kayfabe on you here but seeing this comment and the votes on it just warmed my cynical satire loving heart.
We should shame him into fixing it.
I bet Elon Musk couldn’t fix it! There’s no way he could figure out how to spend a billion dollars fixing it!
Those two images are the same.
I love how the images of Trump trying to look “cool” always end up just adding more comic value whatever the headline or meme.
10 million to haphazardly “eliminate” screw worm. 990 million to “contractors” that do nothing
Sadly, no. It probably will actually cost around $1B to drive screwworms back to the Darien Gap again and that’s assuming the people in charge are planning that (they’re probably not- why help poor countries?!) and capable of following a plan that already worked once (they’re not). This number will balloon out of control and their nonsense plan to hold the line at Texas will be a disaster IF it ever even comes online as it’s planned for late 2027. A preview of the planning genius.
They can just engineer a virus to interfere with this creature’s metabolism or reproduction, right?
That’s more or less what we’ve been doing for decades - breeding, sterilizing and releasing screwworms by the million to curb the population. It works too - but Trump & Friends axed the program, and so now it’ll cost $1bil (more than was spent over the entire lifetime of the program previously) to start it back up again (to make the subtext clear it’s because that money will be stolen)
To make the subtext even clearer, it shouldn’t cost that much, but will end up costing even more than the number they say today as they find new opportunities to line their friend’s pockets with your money.
It’s almost as though DOGE was doing lots of shit the people involved knew fuck all about. ‘I don’t understand this or see the point, therefore it must be woke wastage.’
Musk is the living embodiment of the Dunning-Kruger effect, and his wealth represents the exact monetary value delta of confident ignorance over intelligence.
“What does this 400-room hotel need to employ a full-time plumber for? The pipes are all fine, and no one ever complains about a clogged toilet. Fire that lazy bum!”
Take it out of the jan 6th treasoner slush fund?
It’s a good idea, I’ll give you that…but most of that money is gone. Poof. Disappeared.
That money has been routed through numerous corrupt people and corrupt companies that even Satan himself couldn’t find it without resorting to nefarious trickery.
(Not that Satan would have anything to do with something as disgusting as Donvict Drumpf.)
This is really good for the GDP
Imagine only creating a few millions of economic activity when you can instead create billions.
I thought they weren’t allowing immigration? Those screwworms must’ve paid a heavy bribe.
They will bemoan it and cry there is no money due to evil democrat fraud and the worm is a hoax.
And then give Iran another 50 billion.
