You seem pretty reasonable in asking what the big deal is, so I’ll tell you what happened in California, as I remember it from about 40 years ago:
One huge fear that agriculture had for eternity in California was the Fruit Fly - tiny little bugs that destroy crops. In other parts of the world, once they became infested, agriculture, as they knew it was wiped out. So California was always on the lookout for them. To this day, they have inspection points on Interstates going into California for just this reason. But, of course, some slip through (people bringing them from other states or countries, or wherever). So they have a monitoring system where they set up traps. If they find some in a trap, that means there is some level of fruit fly infestation. And they have a department at the state level that knows how to deal with it. They will use some level of chemical spraying to eradicate them. I remember listening to the news and hearing that 3 of them were trapped yesterday in Escondido (or wherever) and now they’re going to spray a 20 square mile area. And I would think that an overreaction.
So did Governor Jerry Brown, about 40 years ago, thought the same. Some were caught, the experts said you need to aerial spray this relatively small area, and truck-spray this larger area (or something like that). Governor Brown, however, was an environmentalist, and didn’t like using chemicals. So he had them do less spraying, far less. Of course the number being caught increased, and still Brown would not permit aerial spraying. Finally, they told him that the state’s agriculture would be lost, FOREVER, if they didn’t spray now and spray hard. So Brown relented, the planes came out, and dumped a boatload of malathion on crops, cars, people, and anyone/anything else unfortunate enough to be in that large area.
They did stop it...but they waited too long and the measures were much more severe, and people did get sick and cars damaged from that high-dosage spraying.
Bottom line, there’s a right way to fight infestations and infections (which is to cut them off early, as in Singapore), and there’s a wrong way. And even with today’s hair-brained politicians in California, no one ever second-guesses the people who deal with fruit flies.
“They did stop it...but they waited too long and the measures were much more severe, and people did get sick and cars damaged from that high-dosage spraying.
Bottom line, there’s a right way to fight infestations and infections (which is to cut them off early, as in Singapore), and there’s a wrong way.”
Sounds like me with my chronic sinusitis as a 20-something. “It’s just a cold, I’ll get over it”. Antibiotics would have done the trick if I had ever gone to the doctor. Ended up in an 8-hour surgery with my forehead draped over my face and a 5 square-inch hole in my skull.