ArcaMax

Delightful poo-poo memes are going around. In one of my faves, people list stuff that doesn't have cyclospora. It's not salads. It's Snickers, mac and cheese, and cookies.

Hilarious, I thought after a scroll. Solid creative energy from the internet hive mind, a silly way to lighten up news of a perilous parasite. But after closing the phone, I was plagued by a feeling of dread, of deja vu, of "where have we done this before?" Like spotting an ex in the toilet paper aisle.

Trigger warning: I am talking about COVID-19. Specifically, the early days when we believed the virus would bounce after a 15-day slumber party. The sourdough bread and scallion jar jokes were fun before millions of people died, before the electorate fell further into hostility, before the pandemic became a petri dish for conspiracies and changed the makeup of modern society.

Lying in bed, I thought, oh. I don't think we can take another one. We can't handle a lettuce apocalypse! We just can't! If faced with writing three years of explosive diarrhea columns, I might need to quit and work at Sprouts. But then I would be diving into the heart of greens and fruits. Perhaps the answer was to move off the grid into a ...

Sleep mercifully took me.

Daylight heals, and cyclosporiasis is a different beast than COVID-19. You can't catch it by holding hands. You have to eat contaminated food. To date, no one has died.

The numbers, too, are not COVID-adjacent. Reported cases sit around 7,000 in the country. Those figures are probably higher, as not everyone sees a doctor or makes a report from the porcelain throne. Some states are logging steeper counts than the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but either way, it's a lot. Last year at this time, the country had 249 reported cases.

It's not hard to trace this run (sorry) back to the brand of science skepticism and prickly individualism that flourished during COVID-19. The problem with saying, "Don't tell me what to do, bro" long enough is that it works. Eventually, someone in power will say, "OK!" just to win back disgruntled fans.

In 2025, President Donald Trump's administration cut funding and staff at the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration, laid off dozens of workers and gutted departments. Under the purview of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the CDC scaled back its Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network, or FoodNet, a program created after a 1990s E. coli outbreak. It became optional, not mandatory, for health departments in 10 states to track six pathogens including, yes, Explodey McBowel Face.

The White House has denied the notion that cuts to health and food safety systems connect to current crappy conditions. In the immortal words of Judge Judy, since this is a bathroom humor piece, don't pee on my leg and tell me it's raining.

We'd better hope this peters out at the meme stage, that it doesn't take lives, doesn't cause added peril in grocery stores, doesn't bring down more well-meaning salad eaters. It's unlikely this administration will admit mistakes and correct course to help anyone out. Until we elect leaders who choose to value an old-timey thing called public health, it really is every man for himself out here. Just like old times.

Wash your lettuce.

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Stephanie Hayes is a columnist at the Tampa Bay Times in Florida. Follow her at @stephrhayes on Instagram.

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