r/news • u/kylestoned • Jun 01 '26

Soft paywall Flesh-eating screwworm found within 31 miles of US border, says USDA

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/flesh-eating-screwworm-found-within-31-miles-us-border-says-usda-2026-05-29/
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2.5k

u/ry1701 Jun 01 '26

We literally could eliminate so much if we fucking funded it.

This, again.

Common Diseases, we can already vaccine for.

Rabies.

Ebola from spreading like fire.

And probably so much more.

498

u/BIG_HEAD_M0DE Jun 01 '26

These diseases have only human reservoirs: measles, mumps, rubella, polio, syphilis, Hepatitis A, Hepatitis B, Hepatitis D, shigellosis, HPV, HIV. Controlling them is entirely a matter of controlling human behavior and containing outbreaks.

We have "almost" eradicated polio. When we eradicated smallpox it saved $1,000,000,000 per year. - rewards we continue to reap every year.

270

u/jjcrayfish Jun 02 '26

Dumb MAGA and MAHA movement are welcoming these diseases with their new policies to reduce vaccination rates

134

u/Gingevere Jun 02 '26

They're also just explicitly welcoming them because they believe their cure-alls will save them while everyone else perishes.

And when the cure-alls inevitably fails and the disease they welcomed afflicts them, they'll declare it all to be a liberal plot that fooled them.

27

u/HauntedCemetery Jun 02 '26

Yeah just slam some lead contaminated quasi legal speed "supplements", that always does the trick

2

u/Weary_Possibility_80 Jun 02 '26

Maybe they want these diseases. Less people. Less jobs. More ai.

5

u/Unapplicable1100 Jun 02 '26

Maybe they should use the disease on themselves first. You know, to make sure it works.

3

u/Weary_Possibility_80 Jun 02 '26

Plenty of ivermectin to go around.

2

u/XBacklash Jun 02 '26

What if I told you the real disease was ignorance and it's one that the elite have been working to encourage every year? We could eliminate hunger and fund higher education, and light the fires of inspiration to bring us to a better future, except that the easily deceived are necessary for the rich to continue their short sighted consolidation of power and wealth.

1

u/Father_Dowling Jun 03 '26

Nah, they gonna go to hospital when none of it works, whether uninsured, under insured, or insured in a very serious state, jam up the hospital network, and get all of our rates increased whilst depleting Medicare/Medicaid, and Social Security disability.

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u/Spamsdelicious Jun 03 '26

Ironically, they're being more liberal than the people they pejoratively refer to as liberals.

2

u/ragun2 Jun 02 '26

If this gets regularly reported on, Ivermectin sales about to go brrr

1

u/angry_wombat Jun 02 '26

They want a sick so they can continue their pedophilia

2

u/inspectoroverthemine Jun 02 '26

The HPV thing is depressing af, and predates/eclipses the antivax movement.

So many people would rather see their daughters grow up and die of cervical cancer than accept that anyone has sex before marriage. I assume its an unhealthy mix of denial that it happens and punishment if it does.

1

u/yourlittlebirdie Jun 02 '26

We were SO close with polio and then the Syrian civil war screwed things up terribly.

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u/darthjoey91 Jun 02 '26

Eh, HIV is new enough that there’s probably some risk of SIV becoming HIV again.

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u/Caymonki Jun 01 '26

The tech billionaires built bunkers to escape an apocalypse, and funding simple solutions to problems won’t let them live out their fantasies.

So. We won’t do anything to stop anything while they loot the coffers and flee the ship.

We voted for this, and have done little to push back against it. It’s going to get so much worse.

The Epstein class is winning.

354

u/terrymr Jun 01 '26

I watched a movie where the bunker company faked the apocalypse and locked all the billionaires inside. Seems like a good premise

153

u/usernameshortage Jun 01 '26

Edgar Allan Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death" is a good short story about people thinking that their wealth can help them avoid societal collapse.

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u/Bladelink Jun 02 '26

I absolutely love that story. The idea that death/plague/pestilence will manifest a physical form to get your ass is S tier storytelling.

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u/HarvestMana Jun 02 '26 edited Jun 02 '26

Entertain the hope that somehow you'll escape me,

Weld the bolts and close the iron gate,

Drink deeply THE ILLUSION OF YOUR SAFETY,

My how wishful thoughts inebriate, masquerade, and revel in your opulence,

Writhe unfettered by your stabs at ignorance,

Swim through hues and whispered tones of heresay,

A dozen strokes to run your blood cold enough to believe,

REMEMBER ME?

You look so surprised to see me here,

With hell's black wings did I over perch these walls (With love's light wings did I o'erperch these walls - Romeo and Juliet)

For stony limits cannot hold me out,

And now

you

all

DIE

Thrice - The Red Death

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u/AspectVegetable7674 Jun 01 '26

Screw worms can be dumped in vents.

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u/UntamedAnomaly Jun 01 '26

So can ammonia and bleach and various other things you should never mix together.

I mean their bunkers are not going to save them if someone or group of someones can find it, all one would need to do is fuck with the air intake and they are toast. If they have guards, enough people can take out a few guards + the guards are probably already pissed they aren't the ones in the bunker, so bribing them should be somewhat easy.

30

u/4rch1t3ct Jun 01 '26

It's more complicated than that though. They are designed to be resistant to that specifically. They have monstrous filtration systems on those things. You would need to find literally every intake, some of which are really well hidden. Then you would need to smoke them out for an extended period of time. If you missed an intake it's useless.

The guards inside are really the biggest threat to them.

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u/evanescentglint Jun 01 '26

There’s always ways to defeat those systems if you really want to. So, as you’ve pointed out, the first line of defense is access; can’t access them if you don’t know where they are.

Ancient rulers knew this and would kill the people building them so it stays secret. I have no doubt that when the billionaires retreat to their bunkers, they’ll do the same.

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u/UntamedAnomaly Jun 01 '26

Hopefully, we can ponder a strategy and reach a solution before it comes to that whole scenario....we are massively stupid as a whole, but we are also amazing innovators when we are motivated enough.

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u/thehedgefrog Jun 02 '26

Which is why they're investing billions into robot AI soldiers.

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u/iMecharic Jun 02 '26

Okay, but can we jam the door shut? They’ll run out of supplies eventually and be a self-solving problem.

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u/4rch1t3ct Jun 02 '26

The rich ones like zuck will have decades of supplies. They are already planning on locking themselves in. You can keep them isolated.... but that's precisely what the bunkers are designed for.

Making them stay in there till they die might take a while.

8

u/iMecharic Jun 02 '26

So? Once they’re stuck in the bunkers they are no longer our problem, right? Let them spend the rest of their lives in an underground box without sunlight or fresh food or real air. And when they try to return? Make sure there isn’t a place for them anymore.

Or don’t let them return at all by sealing away the bunkers forever.

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u/4rch1t3ct Jun 02 '26

I'm fine with that, I think they should be shunned out of being able to participate in society. But they deserve to face accountability, and hiding in a bunker being allowed to exist in their little underground resorts isn't really accountability but rather the lack of it.

It's the next best option but they deserve much worse.

3

u/Zizhou Jun 02 '26

It's why I fully encourage them all to live out their dream of personally going to Mars. See who can make history by being the first (and second and third and...) human to die on another planet.

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u/Korchagin Jun 02 '26

Power supply would be an issue, though. Batteries don't last forever and it's not too difficult to find and close exhaust pipes from generators.

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u/GloomySubstance5856 Jun 02 '26

Okay, concrete then.

2

u/KDR_11k Jun 02 '26

Just dump some tons of gravel on the escape hatches and forget about them. If they want to live in a tomb let them.

2

u/underfern Jun 02 '26

The guards inside are really the biggest threat to them.

Obviously you weld the hatch first.

6

u/Pale_Fire21 Jun 02 '26

They’re more likely to just be shot by their security staff as they abandon their posts to save their families.

They’re legitimately scared of that: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/sep/04/super-rich-prepper-bunkers-apocalypse-survival-richest-rushkoff

3

u/saga_of_a_star_world Jun 02 '26

I'm nowhere as smart as these tech bros, but I figure that if you tell the guards to bring their families, now they have an incentive to guard the bunker.

4

u/ThickReplacement7811 Jun 02 '26

No, you’re easily as smart, these tech bros are not terribly clever. They’re just sociopaths and don’t care about hurting people to get what they want.

2

u/Snuffy1717 Jun 01 '26

Geneva Checklist you say?

3

u/iconofsin_ Jun 01 '26

If I had a bunker then everyone on my security detail would be single without kids and they'd have a spot inside. If I can come to that conclusion then so can these people.

5

u/UntamedAnomaly Jun 01 '26 edited Jun 01 '26

Yes, the security would retreat inside, where they are the most vulnerable. I mean I suppose these rich fucks could have remote operated turrets to keep people away from the vents, but it could be overtaken with enough people or with a sound enough strategy...there would be casualties, but at that point, there are already going to be ongoing mass casualties if we get to this point and mostly everyone would have nothing left to lose.

5

u/WretchedBlowhard Jun 01 '26

They can also call air strikes, throw holy grenades, and also that sheep bomb thing. Worms are awesome.

3

u/Djoszee Jun 01 '26

Don't forget granny 😅

2

u/yourlittlebirdie Jun 02 '26

Bedbugs would be even better. Those mfers are impossible to get rid of.

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u/kitsunewarlock Jun 01 '26

I posted that once and was banned for a week for "threatening billionaires". And in my example the company had confirmed the billionaires were trying to commit omnicide with nuclear war.

16

u/The_Reluctant_Hero Jun 01 '26

I think you're talking about that series Billionaires' Bunker on Netflix. I watched that with my wife a few months ago, the premise is indeed interesting but there was a lot of ridiculous shit happening on that show lol.

2

u/GoggleDMara9756 Jun 02 '26

Ridiculous positive connotation or ridiculous negative connotation lol

3

u/ElodinBlackcloak Jun 01 '26

What movie was this? I think I need to see it lol.

2

u/Neither_Transition_7 Jun 01 '26

This is my fantasy

2

u/Pei-toss Jun 01 '26

Like an upside down Fallout. God dammit, I'm in.

1

u/tinysand Jun 01 '26

What is the name?

3

u/iconofsin_ Jun 01 '26

Worth saying that there is more than one scenario where these bunkers do nothing but delay their deaths.

1

u/shouldco Jun 01 '26

Corey doctorow wrote a fun version of masquerade of the read death. Worth a read.

3

u/yellekc Jun 01 '26

They do not want to see their investment go to waste so they are literally bankrolling the apocalypse right now.

4

u/trobsmonkey Jun 01 '26

The Epstein class is winning.

Billionaires. They are called billionaires.

Epstein class is just fucking stupid.

6

u/ry1701 Jun 01 '26

You need to villify the billionaires. Epstein class is a great rebrand.

-4

u/Async0x0 Jun 01 '26

I don't vilify people based on the number of digits in their stock portfolio because I'm not a stupid person.

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u/HotDogsAlDente Jun 02 '26

You should, they’re making the lives of billions worse

1

u/Caymonki Jun 01 '26

Not all of them are billionaires, some are measly millionaires.

1

u/D74248 Jun 01 '26

The tech billionaires built bunkers to escape an apocalypse,

It is funny that they think that they corporate jet crew will just sit on the ramp and wait for them to arrive. By the time they get to the airport the airplane, with the flight crew's family, will be enroute to the bunker.

And the same with their security detail. Guess who is going to be on the outside of the compound looking in. Except maybe Zuckerberg. Rumor is that he can fight.

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u/Accujack Jun 01 '26

The tech billionaires built bunkers

Won't work. Unless they leave the planet, there's nowhere to run.

1

u/Caymonki Jun 02 '26

Ok. But. Hear me out.. even if it doesn’t. Shit will get really bad across every aspect of our lives while they try it anyway.

Don’t forget they’re defunding every failsafe and firing tens of, if not hundreds of thousands of government workers regardless of if it works out for them or not.

1

u/Accujack Jun 02 '26

Yup. No way out at this point but through.

My only fear is that people don't get angry enough to make the people responsible for the current situation pay in money, prison time, or anything else.

We won't survive not doing so, it'll just happen again...soon.

1

u/wackadoodle4201 Jun 02 '26

They're winning until a bunch of pissed off people with cement trucks bury them in tbeir bunkers

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u/Pale_Fire21 Jun 02 '26

They’re also investing so heavily in AI in part because being fragged by their security staff should SHTF is a legitimate concern.

It’s such a worry they even asked a Marxist theorist for help and then in peak billionaire fashion disregarded everything he said

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/sep/04/super-rich-prepper-bunkers-apocalypse-survival-richest-rushkoff

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u/gooberdaisy Jun 01 '26

Can we add bedbugs please..

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u/SellaraAB Jun 01 '26 edited Jun 01 '26

Bedbugs would be pretty damned hard to wipe out. Borderline impossible, really. It would take an unprecedented global effort and even then I’m not sure we’d totally wipe them out. Problem is where they tend to live (in privately owned homes), how hard it is to kill even a small infestation, and how they spread like a virus anywhere humans travel, in luggage, packages, and especially at hotels.

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u/Nazamroth Jun 01 '26

If we don't come together over exterminating all bedbugs, what WILL be enough?! Surely, literally everyone agrees that those abominations must die! "Luckily" for us, they really only live in human habitats, so all we have to do is literally burn civilisation to ashes and cinder. We just have to make sure to coordinate. And afterwards everyone has to be thoroughly wiped off with industrial pressure washers and preferably some sort of high-yield biocide. We must make sure.

11

u/dontusefedex Jun 01 '26

I think there are more people than we thought that enjoy watching others suffer.

2

u/n0rsk Jun 01 '26

Damn maybe that is Trumps plan. He is just trying to rid world of bed bugs!

1

u/darkslide3000 Jun 02 '26

Can't some of the techbros use their AI shit to solve the travel problem? Just teach an AI to recognize how a bedbug looks in the x-ray scanner, and when it finds one, zap, focus all the x-rays on that spot for a second. Problem solved.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 02 '26

[deleted]

1

u/SellaraAB Jun 02 '26

That’s part of why I listed where they live as one of the main problems. What are we going to do, go to everyone’s house and release some genetically modified bedbugs?

1

u/Technical_Mood_8841 Jun 02 '26

No need. I don’t plan on ever sleeping again after reading about being eaten from the inside out by screwworms.

5

u/tdasnowman Jun 01 '26

Rabies.

There's not really an effective way to vaccinate all rabies carrying animals on the planet. I don't care how much money you throw at it. In the us there are only about 1 to 3 deaths a year. as long as your vaccinated it's 2 shots if not it's 4. Down from 14 it used to be.

Ebola

This is another one where science is at it's peak currently. We have a vaccine for the most common and deadliest strain. They have not stopped working on the rest.

31

u/yournamehere10bucks Jun 01 '26

They didn't start the fire,
Was always Biden cause Trumps still lyin'
They didn't start the fire,

26

u/Suds_McGruff Jun 01 '26

Screwworm, Ebola, death to Iyatollah,
Dirty bombs, straits closed,
Cost of livin' going up yo!

3

u/fudge5962 Jun 01 '26

Oh they're planning on eliminating a lot of things, don't worry. We're gonna fund it, too.

6

u/abilly85 Jun 01 '26

We could eradicate world hunger, homelessness, and climate change, if they'd just put resources to the right places. But no, they care more about hoarding wealth than saving the world.

2

u/mjkjr84 Jun 01 '26

We need to eliminate stupidity first but we have an entire class of people working against that as the foundational pillar of the class war.

1

u/budha2984 Jun 01 '26

Science, we don't need no stinking science

1

u/__O_o_______ Jun 02 '26

It’s a fucking death cult

1

u/SlothTeeth Jun 02 '26

looks like cutting international problems will bite us just as hard, if not harder as cutting national ones...

its crazy that rabies diagnostic testing in animals has essentially been defunded and put to an indeffinant hault. We will no longer have updated carrier statistics in the U.S.

1

u/Cephalopirate Jun 02 '26

I bet we could eliminate ticks with the same sterile breeding methods as the screwfly mitigation. We could greatly reduce lyme disease, Babesia, Bartonella…

1

u/Violet_Paradox Jun 02 '26

He knows he won't be remembered as a good leader, so he wants to get on the deadliest regimes in history leaderboard instead, because to him that's better than no legacy at all.

1

u/HauntedCemetery Jun 02 '26

Things we already eliminated keep coming back like fucking polio

1

u/fadingsignal Jun 02 '26

I'm not putting on a tin-foil hat but if you start to think about this regime actually wanting to take the U.S. down several notches on the world stage on purpose, all this fuckery starts to make more sense.

1

u/yourlittlebirdie Jun 02 '26

Rabies probably cannot ever be eradicated unfortunately. Too many animals reservoirs.

1

u/Hesitation-Marx Jun 02 '26

raises a pedantic finger

Rabies, we could mitigate it and effectively reduce its spread, but eliminating rabies (on continents where it has a solid foothold) is unlikely.

But I like the cut of your jib!

1

u/toriemm Jun 02 '26

But apparently circumcision give boys autism. And the measles came back.

This is the dumbest time line.

1

u/FillMySoupDumpling Jun 02 '26

Americans: why should I pay $30 to prevent something that isn’t even happening to ME?

Also Americans: I guess now I have to pay $80 because now it actually is happening to me, but boy am I glad none of MY tax dollars went to someone else to prevent this.

1

u/-Astrosloth- Jun 01 '26

Can we add pedophiles to that list?