A big problem for trust in government is that high-quality governance is usually invisible. When the various agencies designed to protect the American people from all manner of threats are working perfectly, most potential disasters are detected and prevented before they happen. A lot of highly trained government workers do diligent and difficult work for little pay and less recognition, heading off crisis after crisis, and the ignorant swing-voting layman assumes that all his tax dollars are being squandered.
So one hopes that the voting public is learning a hard—or I should say watery—lesson about how important good government is, by way of the manifold consequences of Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and Robert Kennedy hacking away at American state capacity. The latest consequence can be heard in the groaning emanating from thousands of bathrooms across the country: the worst cyclosporiasis outbreak in American history. It deserves a name, so I’m calling it the MAHA Trots.
So was the previous cilantro outbreak caused by someone pooping in a hole near crops or from contaminated irrigation water (likely from livestock)? It seems like a material difference to me because it changes how you prevent future outbreaks. The article makes it seem like the first, but I suspect the publication has a perspective it is pushing (not a bad one, but perhaps not related to the cilantro outbreak).
Since you posted your comment, there’s been a large produce company tied to the Taco Bell cases (Taylor Farms). As someone in the field of microbiology, this isn’t just bacteria that can be controlled with disinfectants and sanitizers. This is a protist with a structured life cycle that spends the majority of its life as an oocyst. This SUCKS as it’s resistant to heat and pretty sticky in this stage. So the only options for eradication will involve stopping all manufacturing for weeks and creating an insanely dry environment so the pathogen eventually dies from desiccation. Nonetheless, the more concerning issue is the source of the pathogen, as at this scale, it must have involved a contaminated water supply that was used to grow the crops. So while Taylor Farms will have to destroy a ton of product and shut down production for weeks, there’s a chance as soon as they’re back at it they unknowingly source more contaminated water, unless we clearly identify and address the issue.
PS: Humans are the only known vector and host for this specific protist species!
Just eat nothing raw, and you’re good.
I live in a country where over half the population has parasites perennially, and less than 20% of the wastewater is treated.
Almost all of the agriculture uses water that’s full of various parasites, so I never eat anything raw anymore.
The main solution is to enforce something like the clean water act on cities and homeowners dumping untreated sewage into the watershed