Everyone Thinks They Have the Diarrhea Parasite

Could It Be cyclosporiasis or is it just IBS? That’s the question every social feed and group chat is agonizing over at the moment.

Joye Pate was forced to ask the question earlier than most, when she woke up on a Monday in late June with stomach cramps. The 28-year-old had recently taken a trip to New York, and her first assumption was that she had eaten something that disagreed with her stomach. She went to the bathroom and noticed that her stools were loose.

“An hour after that, I found myself back in the bathroom,” Pate tells WIRED. “And essentially, it just kept happening every hour or so.”

Monday was hourly diarrhea. Tuesday was more of the same. By Wednesday, Pate was frantically Googling, trying to figure out the cause. On Thursday—after days of consuming little other than broth and crackers—Pate finally discovered a potential explanation: cyclospora.

Nearly 7,000 people across the country may have been sickened with the parasitic infection that causes explosive diarrhea, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, although experts estimate that number is almost certainly much higher. As of publishing, the case count in Michigan alone stood at 4,312.

But if you’re scrolling through Instagram, you might think that everyone you know—in every corner of the country—is impacted: bad for the bowels, good for the algorithm. Even if the parasite isn’t actually everywhere, social media is making it feel that way, triggering anxieties up and down your feeds.

Pate never tested positive for cyclospora, but felt her symptoms—which lasted a full week—fit the bill. Her TikTok about the experience has been flooded with commenters who think they might have cyclosporiasis themselves. She wanted to share her experience because, back in late June, there was not much coverage of the outbreak.

Now, Pate says, cyclospora is all over her social media. TikToks by people claiming to have had the infection, as well as videos from people terrified of getting sick, are racking up thousands of views. Suddenly, it seems, everyone wants to talk about their tummy troubles.

“I feel like I have 99 percent of the symptoms, but I also have stomach issues all the time,” influencer Meagan Rose said in a TikTok with more than 40,000 views. “And I’m extremely stressed right now, because I’m like—at what point am I going to know?”

Food content creators, meanwhile, are pivoting to cooked vegetables. “Trying to avoid explosive diarrhea, so how do we feel about steak & crispy smashed potato for dinner?” said cookbook author Arash Hashemi of Shred Happens in an Instagram story on Wednesday.

“Avoiding raw produce? Stir-fry your lettuce,” wrote the New York Times Cooking Instagram account in a story linking to a recipe.

“I was so worried after I had a salad from my local bodega and my stomach was bothering me the rest of the afternoon at work, but I also have a history of IBS,” one woman, who asked to stay anonymous, tells WIRED about her experience with days of watery diarrhea. “There I was on the toilet scrolling through Instagram and seeing posts about the parasite.”

Michigan health authorities have identified lettuce or salad greens as a potential cause for the outbreak, but no specific ingredient, grower, or supplier has yet been named. Past outbreaks of cyclosporiasis have been tied to leafy greens, herbs, and raspberries.

One of the bottlenecks in tracking the outbreak is diagnosing it. Cyclospora isn’t as common as other foodborne pathogens such as E. Coli and salmonella, and routine stool tests do not typically screen for it. Plus, many people who get diarrhea never seek medical care unless their case is particularly severe.