In honor of the latest round of explosive diarrhea...

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I bring you this vintage Onion story from 2000.

Small Town's Cryptosporidium Daze Fails to Attract Visitors


BLAKELY, GA—Blakely civic leaders were baffled last weekend as Cryptosporidium Daze, their elaborately planned summer festival celebrating the popular waterborne pathogen, failed to draw tourists to the Southwest Georgia town.
Small Town's 'Cryptosporidium Daze' Fails To Attract Visitors

"Just as Colquitt celebrates its agricultural heritage with Watermelon Days, we wanted to host a festival that reflected the uniqueness of our community," Blakely Town Council president Jane Lyons said Monday. "When someone suggested a theme inspired by the historical event we're best known for, the Great Cryptosporidium Outbreak of 1988, we knew we had the answer."

Twelve years ago, Lyons said, a small amount of pig feces seeped into the town's municipal water supply, contaminating it with cryptosporidium. As a result, 611 citizens contracted cryptosporidiosis, an intestinal disease marked by abdominal cramps, violent diarrhea, nausea, and fever.

"If it weren't for our town's brush with cryptosporidium, the EPA never would have enacted the Surface Water Treatment Act of 1989," Lyons said. "It established drinking-water standards for the entire country—and it all started right here in Blakely!"

Much to the surprise of town-council members, unlike Colquitt's Watermelon Days and Columbia's Riverfest, which bring up to 15,000 visitors into the neighboring small towns each summer, Cryptosporidium Daze was sparsely attended.

“It’s a real mystery,” Lyons said. “It was a nice, sunny day, the park was filled with booths, and somebody was out there in the big foam cryptosporidium mascot outfit shaking hands with everybody. Yet, somehow, the festival flopped.”

More...https://theonion.com/small-towns-cryptosporidium-daze-fails-to-attract-visit-1819565675/

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