There's a Worm in America.
Once upon a time there was a parasite that suffered under extreme persecution. The time of parasites the world over, holding on for however long they can.
The reports of their death were greatly exaggerated. Or they simply come back out of nowhere. The name of the candidate for parasitehood is the screwworm fly.
This fly of horrors — above all for cattle — eats its way through their innards. Until recently, America believed the fly had been definitively eradicated 44 years ago and would never again screw its way through beef. No sooner was the worm identified as a “hang on, wasn’t this thing here before?” than Agriculture Secretary Rollins knew exactly who was responsible for its return. She named one Joseph, or Joe, Biden as the culprit, who through his border policy had welcomed the screwworm with open arms.
The screwing worm cares little about this, for it is interested solely in living cattle and their innards. From its perspective, there is therefore no conflict of interest with the previous president of the United States of Armerica.
Those of an inquiring mind are right to ask: where on earth has the screwworm been hiding all these decades? And how did it survive without helping itself to cattle? Were they perhaps brought back to life in a laboratory, Jurassic Park-style? The QAnon faithful are going around in circles — and some are going right through them. There’s genuinely a worm in the system, and nobody noticed.
Alongside cattle as victims of the worm, it is the consumers of beef who must now pay an already high price for their barbecue party. Tragic and costly, as far as it goes.
The question, however, hangs in the air — and in the bovine stomach — of how the worm makes its reappearance after so long. On closer inspection, a few inconsistencies emerge that already stop rhyming long before you get close enough to look. Veterinarians were the pioneers who successfully scrubbed that wretched worm from the face of the planet, together with veterinary medicine, naturally. And it is precisely those veterinarians who were rationalised away in great numbers by those four letters: DOGE. What’s more, the proven surveillance system for viruses, bacteria, and parasites was thinned out so severely that these very creatures were quietly rubbing their non-existent little hands together in glee.
Oh dear. The land of boundless opportunity is living up to its label. Those responsible in the US government are enabling a parasite everyone thought long dead to find its way back into beef paradise.
Perhaps some of the original pioneers in the battle against parasites are still reachable — to deal with the worm in the system and in the cow.
Fingers crossed
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