Six deaths reported among screwworm cases, one directly attributed to the flies.
Since the flesh-eating screwworm fly reinvaded Mexico in 2024, human cases of the voracious parasite have been mounting. According to a July surveillance report from Mexico’s Ministry of Health, there have been over 500 human cases in 2025 and 2026. A study this week in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases analyzed the information on over 200 confirmed cases reported between April 2025 and March 2026 and found that the infestation pace is increasing.
Among the 200 confirmed cases in the study, six deaths were reported. At least one of the deaths was directly caused by the fly’s maggots, researchers in Mexico reported in the study.
The New World screwworm (NWS) fly was once endemic in Mexico—as well as the US. The flies lay hundreds of eggs in the wounds, inflamed tissue, mucous membranes, and orifices of warm-blooded creatures. The resulting maggots hatch within a day and begin ravenously feasting on the living flesh of their victims. While the fly’s maggots generate ghastly, life-threatening wounds in a variety of warm-blooded species, including humans, they’re particularly devastating to livestock.
What amazes me about all of this is that flesh-eating worms were just something I had never thought about. Before my lifetime they took great effort to get them under control and so it was a thing that I didn’t even realize existed, but BEFORE that they must’ve been a problem like this. People were out there just getting their flesh et and I hadn’t really seen much mention of it in historical writings of books of the time because it was just a thing everyone dealt with, why talk about it? (not that I’m terribly well read from those periods, but)
I think this is a big mechanism with watching history repeat itself.
“Why do we need unions? They don’t seem to do much.”
“Infections aren’t a big deal. You just take some antibiotics until you start to feel better.”
“These fascist fellows have some reasonable points. We shouldn’t hate them for having opinions.”
One reason things seem of little import is a whole bunch of people put a lot into getting them under control, hiding the true horrors from future generations who don’t look closely.
I thought there might be a name for this kind of logical fallacy, but I couldn’t find one. Maybe somebody else will enlighten me. The Doorman fallacy is somewhat similar.
I’ve also run into similar things during my career in software. The better I wrote a specific piece of code, the less impressed people were with it, because they’d look at it and say, “Yeah, that’s completely obvious, and therefore, I’d definitely write it the same way. Anybody would.” But of course, I’ve seen enough of their code to know they would never write it like that.
When you only see the end result, it can be difficult to appreciate the effort that went into coming up with that result.
“Who needs Vaccines if you have a healthy immune system?”
Another proof that boomers hit the sweet stop when it comes for the best time to be alive. Were alive when the biggest progress was made and died right before all of it was reversed.
I mean they are still alive. Im wondering if silent is not better. all the bad stuff is fron loaded and by and large things get better. granted some of them are still alive but if you were lucky you snuffed it before covid.
Shit didn’t really hit the fan yet. Some boomers are dead already and those that aren’t enjoy their retirements now. They don’t have to worry about the future so they can take advantage of the last livable decades but will be gone before things get really bad.
yeah its kinda funny to watch broadcast tv as so many commercials are geared toward boomers and parting them from the last bits of their wealth while they are still alive or in death.
Growing up in the south, I can confirm this. Part of the reason that the South earned a reputation of lethargy in the 19th century was a rampant infestation of Hook Worm. We are very lucky to live in a time when parasites have been more under control.
we were very lucky.
I think more than likely the density of people/livestock today is much, much higher than it was a century ago, meaning that it could have been isolated to wild animals and didn’t make its way to humanity enough to be noteworthy.
As we have industrialized livestock, and put humans in close proximity to thousands of animals, that makes parasites like this a problem worth solving.
A lot of work was done to exterminate screwworms in North America so I think it it was a big problem in the past.