America has been facing a large number of cyclosporiasis cases. It is a parasite that makes someone really sick to the point they have explosive, watery, unstoppable diarrhea. Not a fun time, in other words. People have been hospitalized due to how sick they've gotten, and enough Taco Bell restaurants have been liked to cases that in various locations they have stopped putting certain vegetables in their meals--and that's a restaurant generally associated with blowing up the toilet! It seems the culprit may be lettuce and other salad greens that were contaminated. Basically, if you needed an excuse to pass on the salad and instead dig into a bag of potato chips, here you go.
In all seriousness, the fact that our current government has massively cut funding to the CDC, and parasite monitoring as well makes it less-than-surprising that it has taken a bit of time for anyone to get much of a lead on this. Everyone likes to say certain government programs/initiatives/whatever are pointless and we should save money by getting rid of them. Then, lo and behold, something that certain people said was a waste of cash turns into a huge issue (hello there, screwworm). Public health is like an escalator, in some ways. You don't particularly take note of it when everything is working as intended. Then, somebody decides not to worry as much about maintenance, the escalator breaks, and we all become very aware of it being an issue as we trek up the stairs that should be carrying us up. Things may only get worse, I worry, as the results of things that, "Aren't important," getting cut continue to become apparent.
