[HN Gopher] A shot to prevent Lyme disease could be on its way
___________________________________________________________________
A shot to prevent Lyme disease could be on its way
Author : Kaibeezy
Score : 550 points
Date : 2021-08-17 08:38 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.outsideonline.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.outsideonline.com)
| abruzzi wrote:
| This is fascuinating. Fortunately I live in a state with very low
| numbers, both absolute and per-100k, but I was curious about how
| infections had spread across the country, so I found this data at
| the CDC:
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/lyme/stats/tables.html
|
| The really strange thing is Massachusetts. In 2010 they had 36.3
| confirmed cases per 100k residents--one of the higher rates in
| the country at that time, but in 2019 they had .1 confirmed cases
| per 100k, while neighboring states remained high. I have to
| assume this isn't real or is some kind of artifact (not
| confirming, just treating?), but I wonder if anyone has any
| insight into this?
| justinpombrio wrote:
| Well spotted. It's a reporting artifact:
| https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ZpyQMEthstNKhKNJQ/massachuse...
| abruzzi wrote:
| thanks for that link. Thats what I expected.
| vinnymac wrote:
| This article gives me hope. My grandfather has Lyme disease and
| it took a very long time to identify, he's very old and spends a
| lot of time outdoors, so the disease has made life much harder. I
| live in an area with a lot of white tailed deer. I get at least
| 600 on my property a year, as it's a highly trafficked area with
| a lot of bedding and running water. Last winter my wife had one
| embedded in her that I had to pull out, and I immediately got
| worried about Lyme disease. Every day around 5pm a baby doe comes
| to our backyard to eat some greens and I receive my reminder that
| the summer season is coming to a close and ticks may become
| rampant again.
|
| More than anything, I hope we can improve our identification of
| this disease, a vaccine would absolutely be a game changer, if
| they can make it happen.
| mind-blight wrote:
| I'm so happy to see this. My dad suffered from Lyme's for years.
| He died 3 months ago due to Lyme's related complications. I
| really hope more people don't have to go what he went through.
|
| It's also comforting (I'm a misery loves company kind of way) to
| know other other people are dealing with, and trying to fight,
| the disease. It makes dealing with everything feel a bit less
| lonely
| zekrioca wrote:
| I'm sorry for your loss. I hope these trials go further to help
| more people in need.
| contravariant wrote:
| > a relatively uncommon treatment for Lyme in which doctors
| siphon some blood, blast it with electromagnetic waves, and then
| drip it back into the bloodstream
|
| That's a weird description, depending on what kind of waves this
| could be anything from microwaving the blood to blasting it with
| UV or just shining some rainbow coloured lights on it.
| akyu wrote:
| >microwaving the blood to blasting it with UV or just shining
| some rainbow coloured lights on it.
|
| Or you could just say, "blast it with electromagnetic waves".
| inter_netuser wrote:
| transfusion blood gets gamma irradiated. maybe that?
|
| also there was some research on UV-C irradiated blood.
| rogers18445 wrote:
| Ionizing radiation. Ingenious approach, sort of a pseudo-
| vaccine, kills and breaks apart a pathogen in the blood that
| was taken and when re-injected it presents a greater attack
| surface for the immune system to learn about the pathogen. Also
| whatever active measures the pathogen cells in the sample were
| taking to evade attention are no longer in effect since it's
| dead.
| hannob wrote:
| The article touches this briefly: I think it's horrible that the
| antivax movement successfully managed to push a working lyme
| vaccine off the market, based on concerns that turned out to be
| false.
|
| Every time you get a tick you should remember that you could be
| safe from lyme, but the antivax movement took that away from us.
| erichocean wrote:
| That's...not how the FDA, or science, or medicine works.
| Antivaxers have no power whatsoever.
| hannob wrote:
| From what I understand the vaccine wasn't taken off the
| market by the FDA or science. It was taken off the market by
| the company producing it, due to pressure from lawsuits and
| bullshit concerns about risks.
| wiz21c wrote:
| I'm not antivax but if the company is sure its vaccine is
| safe, why should they fear lawsuits ?
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Because in the US legal system that uses laypeople as
| judges ("juries"), lawsuits tend to be won by those who
| put on the best play for the juries, not by those who
| have the better arguments on their side like in
| Continental Europe. And to make matters worse, sometimes
| juries go for obscenely excessive damages against
| companies to "make a point" - just look at the McDonald's
| coffee case.
| spicymaki wrote:
| The McDonald's coffee lawsuit was not frivolous[1][2].
| The company served coffee at extremely dangerous
| temperatures. The claimant had severe third degree burns
| and only wanted McDonald's to pay for her medical
| expenses. McDonald's had a least 700 complaints about the
| problem before the lawsuit and did nothing until after
| the lawsuit. Please stop repeating corporate propaganda.
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/s_jaU5V9FUg
|
| [2] https://www.vox.com/policy-and-
| politics/2016/12/16/13971482/...
| nate_meurer wrote:
| No, what happened to Stella Liebeck was terrible, and
| it's right that she had the public's sympathy, however
| her coffee was not excessively hot by modern standards.
|
| Stella's coffee was served within the temperature range
| that was, and still is, recommended by professional
| coffee associations like SCAA and NCA [1]. The NCA
| recommends that coffee be held and served at around
| 180-185 deg F (~80-85 deg C), which is likely near the
| temperature at which Stella was burned. This is a
| perfectly reasonable service temperature, widely used by
| coffee shops, restaurants, and home brewing machines to
| this day.
|
| Stella Liebeck took her cup of coffee and _squeezed_ it
| between her legs in order to fiddle with the lid. The
| result was tragic, but completely expected. If I spill a
| fresh cup of Starbucks coffee on my crotch today, I fully
| expect to sustain third-degree burns. So I take a little
| extra care with it until it has cooled to drinking
| temperature, which happens pretty quickly.
|
| Tea is generally even hotter. Any good tea shop will
| serve a pot of freshly boiled water, at least twenty
| degrees hotter than hot coffee. Spilling that on yourself
| is guaranteed to melt your skin. Great care is warranted.
|
| Again, what happened to Stella was terrible. She didn't
| deserve it, and she didn't deserve the hate she got
| afterward. But she did something really stupid. I
| sympathize, because I do stupid stuff _all the time_ ,
| and I have the scars to remind me.
|
| We're surrounded by extremely dangerous things that
| require great care to use properly. It's useful for
| coffee to be held and served hot, just as it's useful for
| knives to be sharp and cars to be able to reach highway
| speeds. There will inevitably be accidents, but making
| the world completely safe for people who use these things
| carelessly would mean depriving everyone of their proper
| use.
|
| 1 - https://www.ncausa.org/About-Coffee/How-to-Brew-
| Coffee
| torgoguys wrote:
| >The company served coffee at extremely dangerous
| temperatures.
|
| Yes, it was frivolous to many peoples eyes, including
| mine. McDonald's still serves their coffee at the same
| temperatures today. They just changed the cups and added
| warnings at least according to the Wikipedia article on
| the case.
| bkallus wrote:
| The McDonald's coffee case is often cited this way, but I
| think a spilled a coffee that causes third-degree burns
| and necessitates skin grafts is probably too hot.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald's_Res
| tau...
| bluGill wrote:
| Coffee drinkers like their coffee hot. They tell me the
| taste is much better when it is brewed hot. I know I was
| working at McDonalds at the time of the suit, and a few
| weeks later we adjusted our temperatures to the minimum
| of the acceptable range from the max, and immediately got
| complaints. (the complaints didn't start until after the
| adjustment)
| nicoburns wrote:
| Would you not expect to get coffee made with boiling
| water? This is what you would get if you made it at home.
| It can't havr been much hotter than that or it would have
| evaporated.
| torgoguys wrote:
| The article you linked to notes they still serve the
| coffee at the same temperturea today, just changing the
| cups and adding warnings. Probably not too hot or they
| would have changed it after the lawsuit.
| bkallus wrote:
| This is a good point (and so are the other responses
| here)
| _greim_ wrote:
| If they completed the trials then they'd have some
| protection against major lawsuits. But no amount of legal
| protection would prevent low sales due to widespread
| public mistrust. Especially at a time when Lyme wasn't as
| rampant and terror-inducing as it is now.
| johnny53169 wrote:
| They can be sure the vaccine is safe without being sure
| they would win in court.
| inter_netuser wrote:
| so they would lose a legal challenge to the product's
| safety....but it's safe? How does that follow?
|
| Liability is just a cost of doing business.
|
| You ever had D&O insurance? Right now in blockchain
| businesses some get quoted 10+% for coverage, i.e. 100k+
| for 1 mil in coverage. Many simply forego the insurance
| because it's too expensive, and assume the risk.
|
| The product in question had too little upside to offset
| the liability, that's all.
| torgoguys wrote:
| > so they would lose a legal challenge to the product's
| safety....but it's safe? How does that follow?
|
| You convince a jury that it is unsafe. Happens all the
| time. There are many reasons this is easier than it
| should be.
|
| > The product in question had too little upside to offset
| the liability, that's all.
|
| The vaccine had a ton of upside...for those receiving it.
| Like most vaccines, it's not a hugely profitable endeavor
| for the company producing it, so it wasn't worth all of
| the baloney being thrown around in court.
| inter_netuser wrote:
| How much would you pay out of pocket to get the vaccine?
|
| People do group buys for all sorts of nutraceticals,
| small molecules, and even some biologics.
| torgoguys wrote:
| For me, at least $100, probably quite a bit more if I
| thought about it. However, I don't know that you could
| legally manufacture and sell/group buy such things.
| Nutraceuticals gets exceptions under the current,
| disastrous law but this wouldn't qualify.
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| Because the American Legal system is very imperfect.
| inter_netuser wrote:
| You don't think vendors that sell products that can leave
| you maimed for the rest of your life, damage or eliminate
| entirely your earning potential, destroy your marital
| relations, and destroy future of your children should not
| be liable for injuries caused by their product?
|
| Really? You are against holding people liable for faulty
| products?
| hannob wrote:
| I haven't said anything like that at all.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| There wouldn't be a single car being sold if it was the
| case.
|
| The vaccine was approved by the FDA, they did their part
| making sure it was safe. 100% certainty is impossible,
| and people should not be held liable to that.
|
| Here, they pulled off their product off not because it
| was shown to be unsafe but because it was unprofitable.
| Due to the controversy, it was a tough sell, and lawsuits
| are costly no matter if you are right or wrong.
| inter_netuser wrote:
| This one is a real weird forum.
|
| Class action against car manufacturer, Toyota, because of
| 200-400 injuries from airbags? GOOD
|
| Class action against any medical product? BAD until
| proven otherwise.
|
| It's like tainted blood transfusions, vioxx, fen-phen,
| thalidomide just never happened.
|
| I'm guessing the demographics is on the younger and still
| thinks they are made from steel.
| matkoniecz wrote:
| > Class action against any medical product? BAD until
| proven otherwise.
|
| You are arguing with strawman, noone said this.
| tamrix wrote:
| Antivax are people who don't want to take the vaccine.
| They're not against other people taking vaccines or the
| development of vaccines. You're likely misinformed.
| jeromegv wrote:
| Lots of antivax activists have been attacking vaccination
| sites all over North America and Europe
| hannob wrote:
| So you're saying the people who were shouting at people
| standing in line to get a vaccine against covid (which
| happened plenty of times in Germany and I'm sure in other
| places, too) are not antivaxxers?
| fckthisguy wrote:
| Antivax isn't a single organized group, so being antivax
| can manifest in many ways. I know antivaxers who harass
| people who got vaccinated for Covid and protest.
| markus92 wrote:
| Tell that to the antivaxers that attack vaccination sites
| and spread the propaganda.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| You say the word "propaganda" pretty loosely.
|
| I bet you also said "3 weeks to flatten the curve!"
| eganist wrote:
| > I bet you also said "3 weeks to flatten the curve!"
|
| The vaccines were working perfectly in that regard until
| we hit a wall of people unwilling to take them, which
| brought us in the US to where we are today when antivax
| lag hampered us from outrunning the delta variant.
|
| Iceland[1], with >70% vaccination rates, is seeing much
| different outcomes even in spite of record infections.
|
| [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/iceland-
| covid-su...
| inter_netuser wrote:
| Iceland is reintroducing restrictions, possibly for
| years. Gibraltar at 99% vaccination rate is having an
| outbreak.
|
| If 99% vaccination rate will not achieve herd immunity,
| what will?
| imwillofficial wrote:
| Stop with all your facts and numbers, people have a
| religion to follow.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| > The vaccines were working perfectly in that regard
| until we hit a wall of people unwilling to take them,
|
| This is misinformation. Israel has the highest
| vaccination rate in the world. 50% of their new cases are
| "breakthrough cases"
| bluGill wrote:
| > I bet you also said "3 weeks to flatten the curve!"
|
| No, if you check my comment history you will see that I
| said something along the lines of don't flatten the
| curve, kill it with longer, harsher lockdowns. Just
| search for my top downvoted posts. I still maintain that
| stance, two months of harsh worldwide lockdowns would
| have killed the spread completely and we would have been
| completely opened by the middle of last summer. Australia
| almost managed it alone, and a bit more of the world
| joining them could have.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| China did exactly this. It worked decently for them.
| bluGill wrote:
| The more of the world that does it, the better it works
| for everyone.
| pulse7 wrote:
| Spreading false information on Facebook and capturing many
| followers is called "power of influence"...
| computer23 wrote:
| The Lyme vaccine is still FDA approved. The company selling
| the vaccine took it off the market for business reasons.
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| It was a large law firm looking to make a buck who blew it out
| of proportion ...not anivaxxers.
|
| Here's another good article from a more legitimate source.
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2870557/
| acdha wrote:
| It's not OR but AND: as described in that article, the law
| firms didn't come up with the lawsuit out of the blue but saw
| the hundreds of people who set up "victims" groups alleging
| all sorts of injuries caused by the vaccine.
|
| It seems noteworthy that this was relatively early in the
| Internet reshaping society: these groups had websites but not
| massive companies like Facebook promoting them. This ability
| for people to self-organize and diagnose at a large scale is
| still having interesting ripple effects, both helping people
| with unusual conditions which are commonly misdiagnosed and
| helping build lawsuits or political movements from people who
| really aren't interested in accepting the science.
| istjohn wrote:
| You're oversimplifying the issue which is described in some
| detail in the article. Yes, the antivax movement is killing
| thousands of people with their opposition to COVID vaccines,
| but that doesn't mean every vaccine ever studied was good, or
| that the FDA is infallible.
|
| I'm not saying it was good that Lymerix was pulled from the
| market. I think it's unclear. I just think we shouldn't let
| (justified) passion on one controversy cloud our understanding
| of another controversy.
| _greim_ wrote:
| Yeah, one of the terrible things about the anti-vax movement
| is that it makes it hard to distinguish signal from noise
| when looking at objections or criticisms of any vaccine.
| dmos62 wrote:
| In some parts of the world (e.g. the Eastern Bloc) you find tick-
| borne encephalitis. That's a horrible disease that can cause
| cerebral and neural damage. What's more, the number of reported
| human cases of TBE in all endemic regions of Europe have
| increased by almost 400% within the last three decades.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tick-borne_encephalitis
| arpa wrote:
| there have been vaccines against that for a long time.
| nanis wrote:
| > umber of reported human cases of TBE ... have increased by
| almost 400%
|
| Specifically, following the now routine mass bird/chicken
| massacres of the Bird Flu panic.
| Anthony-G wrote:
| Thanks for highlighting this. While most hikers are aware of
| the dangers of Lyme disease, the encephalitis is less well-
| known. I only found out about it while hiking in Slovakia a few
| years ago. At that stage, the hiking trip had started and it
| was too late to get a vaccine.
| dmos62 wrote:
| My area has a relatively high infection rate, but most people
| I know aren't vaccinated, even if they're somewhat aware of
| the dangers. Having a vaccine is not enough, you also need
| people to use it.
| cesnja wrote:
| Fun fact, since I've been vaccinted against TBE, I haven't
| found even a single tick biting me. And I spend even more time
| in the nature now since the pandemic has started.
| Dma54rhs wrote:
| It's a bad disease in the region but there's a vaccine for it
| readily available that you should take if you are connected to
| woods and nature.
| snemvalts wrote:
| And a booster lasts around 5 years I believe? So not as
| bothersome as a flu shot even.
| brightball wrote:
| I used to work with a man who's wife suffers from Lyme disease.
| It's awful to the point of being essentially life destroying.
| She's in terrible pain every day unless she is using strong pain
| killers, which make her live in a cloud essentially instead.
| xyzzy21 wrote:
| Honestly, I live in the the WORST NY county for Lyme but it
| really isn't that big a deal. The country across in Vermont is
| Vermont's top Lyme county. And I live in the woods.
|
| Basically it's easily treated once you are fairly sure you have
| it with VERY MILD antibiotics that aren't super at risk for
| resistance. Getting Lyme is a pretty normal and common thing.
| Akin to catching a cold - it's simply inevitable but you will be
| treatable.
|
| You also need to check for ticks and putting on DEET is always an
| option. Thinking about what you wear is also SOP but no big deal
| (per spicybright's comment).
|
| But honestly WE don't worry about it that much despite being
| completely endemic.
| istjohn wrote:
| There are people in this thread who have had people close to
| them die from Lyme disease complications, and the article
| describes the experience of an avid runner who has been
| sidelined by the disease.
| acdha wrote:
| I believe you intended this to be reassuring but consider how
| it reads to the many people who've had significant, long-term
| effects from the disease. Maybe tone it down a bit on the "no
| big deal" front and focus on the key part: "if promptly
| diagnosed" with the advice about prevention and detection that
| implies.
| nicoburns wrote:
| I think it's just a difference in perspective from someone
| living where it's endemic and pretty much impossible to
| outright prevent. You get used to it. You hear similar
| perspectives on malaria from people living in countriew where
| that is rife. And indeed on other dangers. For example,
| australians don't tend to see poisonous snakes or spiders as
| a big deal.
| acdha wrote:
| Oh, definitely -- my point was simply that it's good to
| think about how that would sound to someone who _isn't_
| used to that risk. Saying "no big deal" runs the risk of
| sounding like "I don't know what I'm talking about" or even
| "I'm downplaying this for some reason". I don't think the
| person I replied to was in either category but I do think
| with medical concerns it's important to acknowledge that
| someone's concerns are reasonable before introducing some
| things which might make the risk more palatable (e.g.
| doctors now are far more likely to quickly recognize it and
| treat it aggressively since there's been a lot of awareness
| that this is becoming endemic in many areas where it didn't
| used to be common).
| stewx wrote:
| Related: "The incredibly frustrating reason there's no Lyme
| disease vaccine"
|
| https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/5/7/17314716/lym...
| wildmanx wrote:
| What shocks me most with this story is that there _is_ a vaccine
| (Lymerix), and it 's pretty effective (76-92 percent after three
| injections) but apparently some anti-vax propaganda and a class-
| action lawsuit essentially removed it from the market. Based on a
| very rare side effect. Wtf? How can that be? Just tell people the
| risks of side effects, and if they are ok with that risk then the
| manufacturer is off the hook.
|
| I'd totally take that shot. 59 cases out of 1.4 million is
| nothing, and even for those it's unclear how they actually were
| related to the shot.
|
| Sadly, this indicates that the new shot could suffer the same
| fate. Give it to a million people, some will _for sure_ have some
| issue, anti-vaxers come with conspiracy theories and convince a
| few to a class action, and there we go, another few decades
| without a shot. Gotta be fast this time before it 's too late
| again.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| There is a difference between vaccine skeptic and anti-vax.
| Imagine if we didn't have people watching over our tech
| industry because that would be anti-tech, or our banking
| industry because that's anti-bank. No, we call them skeptics
| because we realize that's very different than someone who says
| "abolish tech and banks."
| wildmanx wrote:
| I'm all for being critical. I'd find it terrible if side
| effects are just ignored. I wouldn't take any vaccines if
| that's the case.
|
| But in this case, the facts are on the table. There is no
| scientific basis in pulling the vaccine from the market. But
| there was enough propaganda to stoke so much fear that
| everybody got scared and that was that.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Yep - and I live in Minnesota, I've had Lyme's before but
| it thankfully was an obvious rash that taking strong
| antibiotics for a few weeks took care of. I would take it
| if I could.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Yep - and I live in Minnesota, I've had Lyme's before
| but it thankfully was an obvious rash that taking strong
| antibiotics for a few weeks took care of. I would take it
| if I could.
|
| Yeah, me too. I got Lyme's (in my backyard) and just
| finished up my treatment a few days ago (only 10 days of
| doxycycline). I had the rash, but now I'm concerned that
| some infections don't show one. I'd jump at a vaccine in
| a heartbeat.
| strbean wrote:
| Spelling quibble: Lyme Disease, not Lyme's Disease. It is
| named after Lyme, Connecticut.
| aquadrop wrote:
| They literally killed this vaccine, so it's anti-vax by
| definition in result.
| acdha wrote:
| The thing is, we have that process at multiple levels from
| peer-review and the many stages of government approval and
| it's rigorous to the point that people have questioned
| whether it's causing problems due to delays and costs
| preventing development of vaccines for less widespread
| diseases and increasing costs.
|
| COVID-19 has provided a great example of how well this
| process works: even the emergency use authorizations required
| multiple levels of clinical trials and the anti-vax
| propagandists mining the VAERS database for talking points
| can do so because there's a requirement to make a public
| report of anything which happens after someone is vaccinated
| even if there's no real suspicion that it was related to the
| vaccine.
| abfan1127 wrote:
| The process has its flaws. Poorly designed drugs make it
| through the FDA process. Blind following is foolish.
| Skepticism is healthy. I don't get software updates as soon
| as available because, even with the testing, peer reviews,
| flaws still happen.
|
| Further, there were big political and financial reasons to
| push the vaccines through. Those are all conflicts of
| interest. Pfizer had millions of doses manufactured before
| approval. If trial results didn't look good, they certainly
| had the incentive to "massage" the results to get it
| approved and get those millions of doses sold rather than a
| huge loss.
|
| As the original poster shared, it should be a considered a
| reasonable position to be skeptical of small scale results.
| Pfizer's position appears to have scaled well (Moderna as
| well). 100s of millions of doses across diverse populations
| show its relative safety and efficacy.
| acdha wrote:
| I'm not saying it's perfect but rather that the
| skepticism you're looking for is found within the process
| where many scientists who are not employed by the vendor
| review the test results, methodology, and side effects.
| By the time something gets through approval, it's been
| tested in thousands of people with monitoring over a
| substantial time period (even the EUA COVID vaccines were
| monitored for a period of time longer than vaccine side
| effects have historically been observed) and reviewed by
| hundreds of people.
|
| We actually have an interesting example which I think
| validates that process even though it comes in the
| unlikely form of the FDA's recent mistake approving
| Aducanumab. There is a lot of criticism, including IG
| investigations, over the approval _because_ it was
| approved despite having failed to go through the process
| successfully. The Phase III trials were cancelled after
| they concluded that the drug was not successful, the FDA
| 's internal scientific review found it did not meet the
| mark, and the outside scientific advisory panel rejected
| it so strongly that multiple panel members resigned after
| it was approved anyway. That to me seems like a pretty
| good argument that the process was doing what we expect
| and the way to avoid expensive mistakes is to follow it.
| wildmanx wrote:
| You are welcome to be skeptical. But in the meantime,
| don't cause me to not be able to get a potentially life-
| saving drug. You may think it's a money grab or not
| tested enough or a conspiracy or a conflict of interest.
| Fine, don't take it. But I still want it. 1.4 million
| with ridiculously small number of question mark cases are
| good enough for me. They don't have to be for you. But
| let me have it. I pay for it.
| lurquer wrote:
| If the system is susceptible to anti-vax propaganda
| thwarting approval of a good vaccine, doesn't it also
| follow that the system is susceptible to big pharma
| lobbying for the approval of a bad vaccine?
|
| If this wondrously robust multi-layered process buckles in
| the face of a few hysterical anti-vax groups, you should
| ask yourself how robust it remains in the face of a
| billion-dollar pharmaceutical conglomerate with politicians
| in their pockets.
| wildmanx wrote:
| Oh the law firms doing all those class actions are not
| doing this for free either..
| acdha wrote:
| I think you're confused on several points: the vaccine
| was approved following extensive safety tests but the
| lawsuits caused the manufacturer to decide it was not
| worth manufacturing. The U.S. regulators consistently
| found no connection between the vaccine and the
| complaints, so the _scientific_ side worked but the legal
| / business side let public safety down.
|
| Similarly, it's no secret that companies have a vested
| interest in promoting their products but it's not like
| Pfizer says "Trust us, we employ doctors!" and the FDA
| says "Sounds great, no need to check!". Each step of that
| process involves peer-reviewed publications, public data
| releases, and reviews by panels of scientific experts. It
| is quite valid to say that companies need to be strictly
| regulated to keep everyone honest but we don't have any
| indication that this has been happening and anyone who
| thinks the process is just a large pharma company waving
| money at doctors to buy silence _really_ needs to learn
| how cut-throat academic competition is -- the career
| benefits to being the first to report that plot would be
| huge! Remember also that this happens in many different
| countries around the world so that hypothetical
| conspiracy needs to be kept secrete by a multinational
| group of hundreds or even thousands of people.
| hitpointdrew wrote:
| >but it's not like Pfizer says "Trust us, we employ
| doctors!" and the FDA says "Sounds great, no need to
| check!" Each step of that process involves peer-reviewed
| publications, public data releases, and reviews by panels
| of scientific experts.
|
| All these "steps in the process" are completely
| meaningless when there is a revolving door with big
| pharma and FDA. This is nothing more than safety/peer-
| review theater.
|
| Example: Scott Gottlieb FDA commissioner 2017-2019,
| currently sits on the board of directors at Pfizer.
|
| Are you really going to put up a stink and fight on an
| approval if the end goal is cushy job at one of these
| companies? You can bet if you just "push it through" you
| will be looked on favorably for one of these jobs, but if
| you put up resistance and actually want to do due
| diligence, well then you will never be considered.
|
| "It is difficult to get a man to understand something
| when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." -
| Upton Sinclair
| lurquer wrote:
| In regard to the Lyme disease vaccine issue, you are
| glossing over a very important component of the story.
|
| Due to public pressure, the FDA reconvened to take
| another look.
|
| While the FDA did not change its opinion (except for
| requesting some additional labeling and studies) the
| effect was disastrous for marketing. Sales plummeted.
| And, it was no longer worthwhile to pursue. The 'official
| act' of the FDA reconvening arose solely due to pressure.
|
| That's my point.
|
| If anti-vax groups can cause the FDA to "take another
| look" at a drug that has already passed muster, it is
| obvious and not fairly deniable that the agency is not
| immune to political pressure.
| abakker wrote:
| makes you wonder how much "public pressure" came from the
| operators of quack lyme disease message boards and
| alternative treatment providers...after 4 times having
| it, I'm happy to say, in Doxycycline I trust. just don't
| go reading Lyme disease message boards without a tinfoil
| hat on.
| loceng wrote:
| Why don't they understand the pathway for the side effect and
| figure out a diagnostic test for it so people who're
| hesitant/worried (or everyone does it to protect everyone from
| the side effect) so they can be screened out from getting the
| vaccine then?
| im3w1l wrote:
| > 76-92 percent after three injections
|
| That's not a lot. Like sure if herd immunity was on the table
| it might have been, but lyme has an animal reservoir. Like if I
| had 76% immunity I would still panic every time I saw a tick,
| so then what is the point?
| ptmcc wrote:
| That's in the ballpark of pretty much every effective vaccine
| ever deployed.
|
| They are never 100%. This misconception seems to have gotten
| prevalent with COVID and the mRNA vaccines being "only"
| 90-95% effective. That is staggeringly good, better than
| most.
| evanmoran wrote:
| I understand where you are coming from. You will be worried
| about ticks with or without the vaccine. I will too! But I
| think the vaccine isn't for making you stop protecting
| yourself from ticks (it can't do that, as you noted). The
| important part is it's a small poke for a better chance at
| staying healthy. If you are worried in both cases, the
| question becomes is the time/cost to get the shot worth the
| result. So if you walk in the woods a lot the answer is very
| likely yes. If you never go near ticks then maybe not.
|
| Another way to think about it is if there was a vaccine to
| stop car accidents that is only 75% effective, is it worth
| getting the shot even though I'll still be afraid of car
| accidents? Absolutely! The shot is unbelievably easy to get
| and probably cheap. It doesn't solve everything, but it is so
| easy to do it's hard not to be worth it.
| im3w1l wrote:
| Your calculus forgets about side effects. If the gain is
| very minor then it only takes minor side effects to swing
| the balance.
| only_as_i_fall wrote:
| Doesn't this mean that if I were to get bitten by an infected
| tick the odds of contracting limes disease would be at least
| 4x lower?
|
| Seems like a big difference to me even at the low end of the
| range.
|
| Maybe I'm misapplying the efficacy stat though?
| im3w1l wrote:
| You would still have to monitor for ticks and if symptoms
| appear (more rare) you would treat it with antibiotics and
| be fine. This is a minor benefit.
| Talanes wrote:
| >You would still have to monitor for ticks
|
| This part is true no matter how effective the vaccine is.
| Ticks are gross, diseased or not.
| edmundsauto wrote:
| You comment makes it sound like the worst part of Lyme
| disease is the anxiety over having to check for ticks.
| This is inaccurate - preventing 3/4 of Lyme infections is
| a massive net win.
|
| Lyme disease can be horrible. The value is in vaccine is
| to prevent most cases, not to eliminate the annoying tick
| checks.
| majormajor wrote:
| "Not panicking" is not the goal of the vaccine. The
| instinctive reaction of the human brain around panicking the
| same amount over an X chance versus a 4X chance of something
| happening is a brain bug, not a reason to avoid a vaccine.
|
| That 76% (or more) reduction in risk of your panic turning
| into serious disease is the reason to get the vaccine even if
| you're still panicky.
| ralusek wrote:
| The point would be that every time you see a tick, you could
| be 76-92% less worried.
| scotty79 wrote:
| Not even proven side effect. Just something that might be
| theorized to be the effect of the vaccine.
|
| It's really haunting that exactly the same FUD that tanked safe
| and efficient Lyme vaccine hinders covid vaccines adoption. And
| people wonder why companies that make covid vaccine wouldn't
| budge on being exempt from litigation on the basis of percieved
| side effects.
| mmcdermott wrote:
| The difficulty with that exemption is that either a good or a
| bad actor would ask for it. A good actor to avoid being the
| target of frivolous suits and a bad actor to have cover for
| their actions. Because a good or bad actor would behave the
| same in this respect, people bring their own conceptions to
| the table and see what they expect to see (in either
| direction).
| _huayra_ wrote:
| Don't worry pal I gotcha here:
|
| 1. Form The High Church of Vaccination
|
| 2. Claim vaccination as a sacrament
|
| 3. Watch the craven fascist majority of the US supreme court
| (i.e. all of the ones that fashion themselves as lil Scalias,
| but have terrible writing that reeks of double standards, if
| any at all, and dog whistles to their base) try to somehow toss
| the case for not having standing while trying to not undo any
| of the religious exemptions that they've blown open in the last
| decade or so (e.g. from Hobby Lobby to the recent shadow docket
| thing in NYC against Cuomo)
| pessimizer wrote:
| _How drinking bleach became a Church 'sacrament'_
|
| https://www.dailydot.com/debug/genesis-ii-church-bleach-
| cure...
| _huayra_ wrote:
| Well their orange-haired chubby savior did say how good of
| a disinfectant it was. Top it off with some disinfecting UV
| light in a tanning bed and you have the bedrock of a
| healthy life....oh wait I mean cancer.
| wildmanx wrote:
| No, thank you. I've learned what science is. It's pretty
| cool, you should look it up.
| _huayra_ wrote:
| Do you think I'm anti-science? Hopefully the sarcasm of the
| parent comment was not lost on you.
|
| I wish Lymerix was available because I no longer want to
| have to hike or bike in the great outdoors head to toe in
| clothing design to avoid tick intrusion, much less worry
| that I was bitten on an exposed part of my skin. Now I'll
| just have to do it because my skin is designed to be a
| solar panel for vitamin D production in the dreariest parts
| of the Irish winter...
| hitpointdrew wrote:
| >but apparently some anti-vax propaganda and a class-action
| lawsuit essentially removed it from the market. Based on a very
| rare side effect. Wtf? How can that be?
|
| It wasn't "very rare" and the side effect was that it literally
| gave people lym disease.
|
| Why are vaccinations a political thing now, and if anyone
| raises any questions whatsoever on any vaccine they are "anit-
| vax".
| wildmanx wrote:
| > It wasn't "very rare" and the side effect was that it
| literally gave people lym disease.
|
| Again, 59 of 1.4 million. I call that "very rare". About half
| a million Americans get Lyme from ticks, every year. You do
| the math. Even _if_ there is a causal connection to the shot
| (which has _not_ been established) then that 's still orders
| of magnitude lower than the risk of _actually_ getting the
| bacteria in you if you somewhat frequently visit the woods.
| And if you don 't, just don't get the shot. Your call.
|
| So yes, that's a textbook "anti-vax" sentiment. It's not
| based on the actual scientific evidence but uses people's
| overall fear of vaccinations. And it hurts everybody, because
| the result is that even people who _want_ the vaccine can 't
| get it. Otherwise I wouldn't actually care. Let the anti-vax
| people suffer if they choose to, but leave me out of this.
| hitpointdrew wrote:
| >Again, 59 of 1.4 million
|
| Source?
| wildmanx wrote:
| The article we are discussing here. You read it, right?
|
| (And the article got that number from the FDA.)
| koheripbal wrote:
| hmm... we need to compare rates of infection, not raw
| numbers since only a small number of the population ever
| received the lime disease vaccine, and both populations
| reside only in part of the US.
|
| In any case, I agree with the underlying point that it's a
| travesty that the vaccine was taken off the market due to
| fear-mongering and unproven allegations.
|
| It's a testament to the failure of the judicial system to
| protect against frivolous lawsuits.
| nawgz wrote:
| That is what was done.
|
| > The arthritis incidence in the patients receiving Lyme
| vaccine occurred at the same rate as the background in
| unvaccinated individuals. In addition, the data did not
| show a temporal spike in arthritis diagnoses after the
| second and third vaccine dose expected for an immune-
| mediated phenomenon. The FDA found no suggestion that the
| Lyme vaccine caused harm to its recipients. [0]
|
| [0]:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2870557/
| Teknoman117 wrote:
| My dad spent 2 months getting over a nasty Lyme infection a
| few summers ago. Not fun at all.
|
| I have a few scars from tick bites that I was lucky didn't
| cause any infections. Sign me up for whatever vaccines I
| can get for tick-borne things. I'd love to see the Lyme
| disease vaccine come back and I'd love to see something for
| AGS.
| jefurii wrote:
| "Possible side effects" includes any condition that arose
| during the trial, whether or not it was directly caused by
| the vaccine being tested. Source: a family member has a job
| that involves drug trials.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| I see nothing to say it gave people Lyme disease. The *claim*
| is that it caused the same sort of arthritis that Lyme
| disease can cause.
|
| Note that the class action suits were settled without paying
| the "victims" anything. That shows they were garbage from the
| start.
| anon946 wrote:
| Investigation found that the incidence was no higher than for
| unvaccinated individuals
| (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2870557/):
|
| >By 2001, with over 1*4 million Lyme vaccine doses
| distributed in the United States the VAERS database included
| 905 reports of mild self-limited reactions and 59 reports of
| arthritis associated with vaccination [29]. The arthritis
| incidence in the patients receiving Lyme vaccine occurred at
| the same rate as the background in unvaccinated individuals.
| In addition, the data did not show a temporal spike in
| arthritis diagnoses after the second and third vaccine dose
| expected for an immune-mediated phenomenon. The FDA found no
| suggestion that the Lyme vaccine caused harm to its
| recipients.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > It wasn't "very rare" and the side effect was that it
| literally gave people lym disease.
|
| It sounds like it didn't actually do that:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyme_disease#Vaccination:
|
| > Subsequently, hundreds of vaccine recipients reported they
| had developed autoimmune and other side effects. Supported by
| some advocacy groups, a number of class-action lawsuits were
| filed against GlaxoSmithKline, alleging the vaccine had
| caused these health problems. These claims were investigated
| by the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control, which found
| no connection between the vaccine and the autoimmune
| complaints.[170]
|
| > Despite the lack of evidence that the complaints were
| caused by the vaccine, sales plummeted and LYMErix was
| withdrawn from the U.S. market by GlaxoSmithKline in February
| 2002,[171] in the setting of negative media coverage and
| fears of vaccine side effects.[170][172] The fate of LYMErix
| was described in the medical literature as a "cautionary
| tale";[172] an editorial in Nature cited the withdrawal of
| LYMErix as an instance in which "unfounded public fears place
| pressures on vaccine developers that go beyond reasonable
| safety considerations."[25] The original developer of the
| OspA vaccine at the Max Planck Institute told Nature: "This
| just shows how irrational the world can be ... There was no
| scientific justification for the first OspA vaccine LYMErix
| being pulled."[170]
| adrr wrote:
| Same thing happened to silicone breast implants. Lots of
| class action lawsuits claiming leaking silicone caused
| health issues. Lawsuits bankrupted Dow Corning. There was
| no evidence that it caused issues and you can still get
| silicone implants today.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| Yeah, when the science was in the symptoms claimed to be
| caused by the implants were more common in women without
| implants than in women with implants.
| jorblumesea wrote:
| > Why are vaccinations a political thing now
|
| You could flip that upside down and ask why people are
| questioning the experts. Despite having almost no knowledge
| of statistics, epidemiology and other required skills.
| Vaccines with rare or almost no side effects are being called
| into question.
| all2 wrote:
| We could flip it sideways and ask "why question anything at
| all?"
|
| We should not be guileless. Whether I have a piece of paper
| that shows others I'm an "expert" or not, I still question.
| I ask things like "why is this contemporary vaccine XYZ so
| politicized?" and "why are companies and governments
| _paying_ people to take it? "
|
| In other arenas, we say that if you receive something for
| free "you are the product". So I ask "why is this
| contemporary case any different?"
|
| The above is only an example. I reserve my right to
| question. I will note that I'm in no position to dictate to
| others. I will also note that very few people are
| _currently_ in a position to dictate to me. I desire that
| status quo to remain. Anything else is despotism.
| stinos wrote:
| More on this:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2870557/
| irq-1 wrote:
| > Just tell people the risks of side effects, and if they are
| ok with that risk then the manufacturer is off the hook.
|
| If a for-profit corporation includes a warning in a EULA
| they're off the hook?? That's definitely not the principle we
| should use to evaluate new drugs.
|
| If the company decided to take it off the market, when there
| are _always_ lawsuits about new drugs, what should we do?
| Should we liberate the drug from the company and let others
| sell it? The system we have now lets Medical Doctors decide
| when a drug should be approved, and when it should be on the
| market.
| wildmanx wrote:
| You're mixing up a few things here. Every drug has a list of
| side effects. They are known, that's what your doctor tells
| you, and then you make an informed decision whether you want
| to take the drug or not.
|
| It's not Medical Doctors that decided to withdraw approval
| and then removed it from the market. The approval was all
| fine. What was not fine was the public perception. Because
| the anti-vax campaign was very effective. Too many people
| started to think it's too fishy, so out of caution didn't
| want the shot anymore, so it became unprofitable to keep it
| on the market, so the manufacturer pulled it. (A bit
| surprising they didn't sell the IP or license it cheaply to
| somebody more adventurous..)
|
| That's how your life can get impacted if the anti-vax lobby
| gets too strong, and that's what scares me. They can mess up
| their own health as much as they like, but once my life gets
| worse because of it, I have a problem.
| fallingknife wrote:
| I do not want to have to ask doctors permission to get the
| medicine I need. Make them like lawyers where they are
| advisors only. If that has a side effect of letting companies
| off from some liability, then I will accept that trade off.
| irq-1 wrote:
| > I do not want to have to ask doctors permission to get
| the medicine I need.
|
| That's how it works in most countries, but not the US. Here
| we have a government regulatory agency (the CDC) to protect
| people from the ill effects of the free market. I like it
| that way.
| scotty79 wrote:
| If the product causes provable harm then company should be
| prosecuted criminally by the state to determine if the
| testing done was sufficeint and there was no faul play.
|
| But letting random people sue manufacturer because they have
| some symptoms at later point in time than the time they took
| the vaccine is just recipie for what already happened on case
| of Lyme vaccine. Everybody looses except for lawyers and
| people loose the most.
| irq-1 wrote:
| You're suggesting a fundamental change to the legal system
| in the US. The idea that we would depend on the Government
| pursuing criminal charges... that's scary to me.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tort
| pwenzel wrote:
| I live in Minnesota and am being treated for Lyme disease for
| the second time in 15 months. It's no joke. The first time I
| got Lyme, it came with a painful shingles co-infection on top
| of the usual symptoms.
|
| Now the second time, I am again worried about getting sick with
| something else while in an immunocompromised state. The
| fatigue, fever, and back pain that came along this second time
| was worse than the first. I needed a nap after walking up the
| stairs.
|
| So, I am curious how bad and prolonged the side effects were in
| these 59 adverse events. If only temporary, I'd consider it
| worth it over getting the actual disease.
|
| The article also asks, "Why vaccinate against something that
| can be cured with antibiotics?" Undiagnosed Lyme becomes harder
| to treat the longer you wait, and the dose of antibiotics
| longer and more intense.
|
| (PS: I am so very thankful for doxycycline.)
| nomel wrote:
| Have you considered hyperbaric oxygen treatment?
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24726678/
| pwenzel wrote:
| I have not. Looks interesting. To be clear, I do not have
| chronic lyme, but rather have been bit by a tick twice in
| the last year and a half and got lyme disease each time.
| tdeck wrote:
| I had Lyme twice as a kid too (in suburban Pennsylvania).
| It's not fun and it's a bit crazy that you can get it more
| than once. People are usually shocked when I tell them. I
| knew someone who was temporarily paralyzed on one side
| because of Lyme that they diagnosed late - it's scary.
| abakker wrote:
| I grew up in CT. Had it 4 times, only got the bullseye
| once. It is no joke, and as you get older it seems to suck
| more and more. Last time I had numbness in my face as the
| only symptom, but...thrice bitten, fully paranoid, and I
| was treated pretty fast.
|
| One thing which is important with a vaccine is that when I
| was a kid (early 90s) the rate of ticks carrying lyme was
| in the 10% range or less, while now it is >50%. A vaccine
| is critical.
| sonicggg wrote:
| How do you manage to get it so often? I live in an area
| that is endemic to Lyme, but it's something that can
| easily be avoided (much easier than Covid). But I do see
| reckless behaviour all the time as well, so maybe it is
| not that surprising.
| tdeck wrote:
| I didn't have the bullseye the second time either I was
| just extremely tired and had a mild fever. That's how it
| often goes, and if my mom hadn't recognized the
| nonspecific symptoms it could have been a lot worse.
| loceng wrote:
| How was it diagnosed?
| notabee wrote:
| Shingles is caused by varicella (chickenpox) virus that's
| already latent in your nerves. Really unlikely that it was a
| "co-infection", it just reactivated because your body was
| busy fighting Lyme.
| shockeychap wrote:
| I'm not sure what you think "co-infection" means, but you
| just described precisely that. The reactivation of shingles
| meant that he was simultaneously infected with two
| different agents. "Co-infection" (for me at least) implies
| nothing about how or where the secondary infection came
| from.
| notabee wrote:
| That's fair. It's a really commonly implied thing among
| the quackier side of Lyme treatment that every tick is
| going to unload a clown car full of pathogens (used to
| justify even more unvalidated tests). But, by the
| definition, it's just co-occurring infections regardless
| of vector.
| Kenji wrote:
| > that every tick is going to unload a clown car full of
| pathogens
|
| They mostly are, though. Lyme is not the only horrible
| disease. There's Tick-borne encephalitis (TBE) and other
| nasty shit. As a kid, I was in the woods every day.
| Didn't get a tick for years, despite walking through
| thick woods in shorts. Then I got stung a few times,
| didn't think much of it. Then I got Lyme. Had terrible
| joint pains for months despite immediately taking
| Doxycycline. Since then I almost never went deeper into
| the woods again. You're immediately full of ticks. I once
| picked up a piece of trash that was on the side of the
| path and immediately had a tick crawling on my hand. What
| a nasty infestation of our woods. Did you know that Lyme
| is a sexually transmitted disease (STD)? Yes, if you have
| intercourse with someone who has Lyme, you may get
| infected as well. Lyme is a horror show.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| You know, its not impossible for millions of people to have
| long term side effects from COVID. The absolute overconfidence
| in its long term safety is based on nothing other than wish
| full thinking. There are early signs, and warning from Doctors
| now. They just ignored and gaslighted by corporate media, and
| sadly people like you that don't know the history of previous
| accidents with vaccines. Early Polio Vaccines caused 40,000
| children, and more than 50 paralyzed.
| markenqualitaet wrote:
| I assume you mean the vaccine.
|
| "Long term effects" here doesn't mean what you think it
| means....
|
| In the past, long term side effects were still occuring with
| weeks or few month after the shot. However, the statistical
| signal may be delayed for years or decades to manifest.
|
| It's very hard to think of a way how anything could cause
| side effect years down the line. Vaccines do not contain
| beryllium or asbestos. The mRNA vaccines do not even contain
| mercury or other heavy metals. Mind you, 'none' means less
| than a can of tuna. They do not remain in the body for long.
| None of it.
|
| That's why people aren't too worried, rationally. Long term
| effects whould have shown already.
|
| If you indeed mean COVID, I agree. There may be late long
| term effects, because of the diffuse organ damage and
| persistent infections.
|
| Of course _any_ strong immune stimulation may slightly
| increase _or decrease_ the risk for derailing or aging the
| immune system. Which may sooner, e.g. autoimmune disease
| risk, or later, e.g. lymphoma risk, manifest.
|
| For COVID it's a silly debate, because you will get infected
| or vaccinated in any case.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| Some people are worried, just you never get here from them
| because they are either censored or drowned out by the
| corporate press.
|
| Here's a doctor, you don't usually get to hear from raising
| concerns you don't seem think to exit.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUE5EBPt-lU&t=1128s
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| The claim was that in some individuals the vaccine caused
| an auto-immune reaction. It seems to me that anyone who had
| that problem would have developed the same problem if they
| got the disease.
| 1053r wrote:
| The deep irony here is that you wrote "its not impossible for
| millions of people to have long term side effects from
| COVID."
|
| While it's clear from the rest of your post that you meant
| the vaccines, you accidentally ended up making your own
| counterpoint! It is ABSOLUTELY possible for millions of
| people to have long term side effects from COVID, the
| disease.
|
| It would be a brand new thing for a vaccine to give so many
| people side effects so long after the shot. No vaccine has
| ever given people side effects that didn't show up within
| about 6 weeks.
|
| Yes, some people had side effects from the Polio vaccine. But
| you know what was far more likely to cause lifelong side
| effects? Polio!
| skocznymroczny wrote:
| I think a good test for Lyme disease would be more important than
| a vaccine (which is welcome too if it works well). The problem
| with Lyme disease is that it's symptoms are very wide and
| generic, and the commonly used tests are not very reliable. This
| means that many people live with the disease not aware of it,
| while others self-diagnose Lyme disease and cure it even if they
| didn't have it (because they had symptoms like longterm brain
| fog).
| istjohn wrote:
| The problem is that the treatments we currently have for Lyme
| disease only provide temporary relief for a sizeable minority
| of sufferers.
| elric wrote:
| I'm not sure why this is getting downvoted. Testing for lyme
| really is pretty unreliable. Given how hard it is to reliably
| test for, we really don't have a good grasp on how prevalent
| lyme infections are.
|
| Another thing that would great, in addition to a vaccine and
| better testing, is prevention. Infected ticks are way more wide
| spread than they used to be. I've heard various reasons for
| this, including habitat loss of all kinds of animals. Simple
| measures can help, like eating more deer, or letting chickens
| roam free in high-tick areas.
| bregma wrote:
| I don't understand why there would be a problem testing for
| borreliosis. It's caused by the borrelia spirochete, which is
| almost identical to syphilis. The variant of borrelia that
| causes relapsing fever was one of the very first causative
| micro-organisms diagnosed because it it so obvious under a
| low-power microscope. Surely the variant of borrelia named
| after a town in New England should be as easy to diagnose: if
| you have the spirochete you have the infection, otherwise you
| don't.
|
| Granted I'm just a rando on the internet and not an expert in
| infections diseases. On the other hand, I've diagnosed with
| and successfully treated for Lyme disease. I still get dozens
| of tick bites a year. A reliable test would be a boon for
| people like me.
| robbiep wrote:
| It might be downvotes because the op didn't read the article,
| which isn't about a vaccine (the article says there was one
| but it was discontinued) but about the Lyme equivalent of
| PREP
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| We keep chickens and I can tell you a domestic chicken
| roaming free in a high tick area would be gone in a few days.
| Hawks, foxes, raccoons, coyotes, whatever. They're
| domesticated and flightless.
|
| What you want is guinea hens. They're voracious tick eaters.
| And will hide in trees, etc. at night. But also noisy as
| hell, and will walk all over roads.
|
| Wild turkeys eat a lot of ticks, so we should be encouraging
| them.
|
| Northern bobwhite quail are a native (to north america) quail
| which eat a lock of ticks. But they're near-threatened and
| very few of them in the wild and they also don't go as far
| north as New England (we have them here in Ontario but
| sparsely)
| vimy wrote:
| Correct. The ELISA test is as reliable as a coin toss. It was
| also never meant to be used for diagnosis, only for research.
| Grazester wrote:
| Wasn't there already a shot being made a long time ago but was
| shut down due to a whole lot of hot air from critics and anti-
| vaxxers?
|
| https://time.com/6073576/lyme-disease-vaccine/
| bkanber wrote:
| Yes. In my eyes, the original Lyme vaccine was the first
| casualty of the modern anti-vax movement.
|
| They claimed that the vaccine gave them Lyme when really the
| vaccine gave them an immune response for a few days... as
| vaccines should. Through a huge amount of media attention they
| scared away the pharma company, they stopped marketing, sales
| tanked, the vax was pulled. No medical issues with the vaccine
| were ever discovered.
| Inhibit wrote:
| The article covers that but very pointedly doesn't bring up the
| angle. Just a note that suddenly there were dramatically lower
| projected sales the next year.
|
| If you read closely they attribute this to medical objections
| without mentioning the reason you're stating. Your statement
| better aligns with my memory of the period.
| istjohn wrote:
| I think you're shortselling the critics. See the quote from the
| article in my other comment:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28210290
| kortex wrote:
| Graveyard of "not considered a real/serious disease/threat by the
| medical consensus until a frankly embarrassingly amount of time
| later"
|
| [x] "cadaverous particles" (washing hands after autopsies)
|
| [x] "hysteria" (likely a combination of various mental health
| conditions and/or PCOS, polycystic ovarian syndrome)
|
| [x] "GRID" (HIV/AIDS)
|
| [x] leaded gas bad
|
| [x] asbestos bad
|
| [x] smoking bad
|
| [?] refined sugar bad
|
| [x] Autism
|
| [x] ADHD
|
| [x] COVID-19 (from ??-2019 until Feb/Mar 2020)
|
| [ ] chronic lyme/other tickborne illness
|
| [ ] ME/CFS
|
| Hopefully, the skyrocketing case load of the latter two (due to
| explosive spread of tickborne illness, and "long covid",
| respectively ) will get the gears actually turning and change
| consensus.
|
| I don't get what's wrong with the medical community acknowledging
| "hey we have all these odd cases, we can't pin down a cause, but
| here's the leading theories." Instead, just look at the
| "Myth/Fact" thread elsewhere in the comments here. Stating with
| such authority "antibiotics totally cure Lyme". Since when is
| _anything_ in medicine a sure bet? You 're telling me it's
| impossible that an evolving lifeform can't possibly evade the
| immune system and selection pressure and become persistent? What?
|
| Ok, please rebut me, tell me how this line of reasoning, "these
| currently 'orphan' diseases deserve taking a closer look, and not
| dismissed out of hand" is wrong.
| ollifi wrote:
| Isn't Hysteria the other way round than those other diagnoses
| on the list? It used to be diagnosed but since doctors don't
| believe in it anymore.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| "Chronic Lyme" is a very challenging topic because it has
| become a mix of legitimate symptoms (those suffering post-
| treatment Lyme disease) but also a pseudoscience catch-all
| diagnosis promoted by bad alternative medicine practitioners.
|
| Contrary to popular belief, the CDC and medical community do
| actually continue to research the topics of potential Lyme
| persistence and post-treatment Lyme symptoms. We're discussing
| this under the headline about a new Lyme disease vaccine,
| aren't we?
|
| However, there is also an out of control pseudoscience/quackery
| community that has attached itself to Lyme as the go-to
| explanation for unexplained symptoms. They're drawn to the
| theories of Lyme persisting in undetectable ways, which they
| use as an excuse to diagnose people by vague symptoms alone.
| There are now a number of well-known scam Lyme disease labs
| that claim to use proprietary techniques to identify Lyme
| disease that the reputable labs can't catch. Virtually everyone
| who submits a sample to these scammy labs comes back with a
| "positive" result.
|
| I once tested positive for Lyme using the CDC criteria from a
| reputable mainstream lab. The specialists I saw _did not_ mess
| around with treatment as well as follow up, but they did go to
| great lengths to ensure I wasn't trying to get in with a
| pseudoscience or self-diagnosed "chronic Lyme" case. One of
| them explained that she was inundated with appointment requests
| from people who self-diagnosed as "chronic Lyme" after reading
| Internet forums despite multiple negative test results and
| refused to believe any other explanation. The "chronic Lyme"
| online communities are a terrible mess of misinformation, but
| the actual medical community around Lyme treatment is quietly
| continuing to do good work. It can be difficult to separate the
| two from the outside due to all of the noise made by the
| pseudoscience quacks that have attached themselves to the
| topic.
| kortex wrote:
| That's fair. But I'd rather humor the quackish side of
| chronic lyme and see some progress being made, rather than
| lean to the side of dismissing them, along with people with
| legitimate complaints.
|
| The inability to adequately assay Lyme speaks more to how bad
| we are at assaying diseases, than to the (il-)legitimacy of
| the disease.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > But I'd rather humor the quackish side of chronic lyme
| and see some progress being made,
|
| That would have the opposite effect, because many (or
| likely most) of them never actually had Lyme disease.
|
| That's the problem: "Chronic Lyme" has attracted too many
| pseudoscience practitioners who lazily blame everything on
| undetectable Lyme. They diagnose based on symptoms alone
| and/or employ tests with known extreme false positive rates
| while dismissing mainstream tests that have been validated.
|
| The more you mix those false patients into the real Lyme
| population, the more you dilute the real signal from actual
| patients.
|
| Humoring the quackery doesn't advance the science.
|
| If you want progress to be made in a field, it's important
| to be diligent about keeping the quackery out.
| babyblueblanket wrote:
| The issue with humoring the quackish side of chronic lyme
| is that you swiftly get into supposed treatments that are,
| in fact, quackery or can be actively harmful to patients
| (such as extremely long antibiotic treatments). So you risk
| both wasting money and harming people by humoring stuff you
| know is nonsense.
| emerongi wrote:
| A lot of it is just science catching up to what is observed in
| the real world. I agree that many practicing doctors are
| operating on out-of-date knowledge, so if you happen on one of
| those and start talking about CFS, you might not get a positive
| reaction. Isn't it the same as unknowingly hiring a bad
| contractor, though? Doesn't mean that the engineering community
| is not trying to find more efficient and better ways of
| construction. CFS is a recognized disorder by the medical
| community, although the causes are unkown. That is not
| surprising considering the complexity of the human body.
|
| Tick-borne illnesses are talked about a lot in Europe, ever
| since I was a kid (~20 years ago). Can't say I have received
| much conflicting information in all those years.
| kortex wrote:
| > CFS is a recognized disorder by the medical community,
| although the causes are unkown.
|
| My point was, it wasn't even a recognized disorder until
| fairly recently. As I understand it, part of the problem is a
| cottage industry of quackish medicine sprung up around the
| unfalsifiability of chronic Lyme and CFS. But instead of the
| medical community taking an agnostic stance "we see you are
| suffering but we can't explain it", there was a strong push
| in the opposite direction, asserting that it's psychosomatic
| / "only in your head" / "here's some antidepressants." And
| you see this pattern again and again. I think the dismissive
| attitude is starting to abate among the younger medical
| professionals but you still see this air of "anything I
| wasn't trained on isn't a thing" among many of them.
| dkarl wrote:
| > there was a strong push in the opposite direction,
| asserting that it's psychosomatic / "only in your head" /
| "here's some antidepressants."
|
| As a counterpoint to this, my first exposure to chronic
| fatigue syndrome came while I was dealing with depression
| and getting psychotherapy for the first time. CFS popped up
| in the news, and a friend guided me to a web forum where
| I'd get the "unfiltered" version from people who suffered
| from it. What jumped out to me about that community, given
| my struggle with depression at the time, was that it was a
| cesspool of stigma against mental illness. The experiences
| people reported varied over a wide spectrum, but there was
| a significant contingent of people with classic symptoms of
| depression along with the vague physical complaints that
| most people have, outraged that doctors would be so
| insulting as to suggest depression or other psychological
| explanations. If there was one belief that united the
| community, one shared credo, it was that they deserved a
| physical diagnosis because their dignity required it, and
| they would not accept a psychological diagnosis because it
| would render them unworthy of sympathy. One person summed
| up the consensus succinctly by saying it was an outrage for
| doctors to suggest that they were "just too lazy and too
| stupid to get their lives together." That was unwelcome,
| but valuable, confirmation of how some people saw
| depression, and it made me more guarded about when and how
| I talked about it.
|
| So it cuts both ways. I'm sure there are doctors who
| arrogantly label any patient they can't figure out as
| "crazy," but I'm just as sure there are patients who
| overreact, angrily, to any mention of psychological causes
| or treatments.
| emerongi wrote:
| Right, I understand your point better now and agree. I'm
| not sure what medical training consists of today, but
| improvement on this issue should start there.
| jacobr wrote:
| TBE is another terrible tick borne neurological disease that's
| increasing rapidly, currently only in Eurasia. There's no cure,
| but at least a decent vaccine. It requires booster shots every 5
| years though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tick-
| borne_encephalitis
| foepys wrote:
| While it might turn deadly, there are many asymptomatic cases,
| too, so it's not like Ebola or something.
|
| One should still get the vaccine when living in or traveling to
| an affected area and plans to go into nature, though. When I
| was last vaccinated it took 3 months for the vaccine to reach
| ~70% efficacy after 2 shots and 12 more months to reach 99%
| efficacy after 3 shots, so people should not wait until they
| travel to get it.
| davnn wrote:
| Ticks are incredibly common where I live (Austria) and so is
| hiking. In our local "shark tank" show someone pitched a
| freezing/electroporation tool (modified lighter) to remove ticks;
| I guess [1] is the final product, which sounds pretty interesting
| IMHO.
|
| [1] https://help-pen.com
| resalisbury wrote:
| The new treatment entered Phase 1 trials in January 2020 with 60
| participants and the earliest it would be in market is 2024.
|
| You have to scroll through 20+ paragraphs before you get to the
| lede...
|
| "Enter Mark Klempner. A physician and infectious-disease
| scientist at the University of Massachusetts, he's embarked on an
| experiment that could upend the field of Lyme treatment. Klempner
| is the lead creator of a first-of-its-kind antibody shot for
| preventing Lyme infection."
|
| And the most relevant update comes after around 50 paragraphs in
| the 3rd from last.
|
| "In February, Klempner's phase-one trial kicked off with 60
| participants. The goal of the trial is to determine the right
| dosage so that a person is protected for six to eight months.
| Lyme PREP will have to be administered annually, but it's a small
| price to pay in the minds of infectious- disease experts. If my
| forehead looks flat, it's because I have been banging my head on
| the wall for 35 years," says Telford. "We need as many tools as
| possible to prevent Lyme disease."
|
| In just a few years, Lyme PREP could be available for commercial
| use. Klempner is eyeballing 2024, and maybe even sooner,
| depending on how the drug performs in clinical trials."
| spicybright wrote:
| As a US new england-er, this is game changer for walking through
| woods.
|
| For those un-informed, on a walk through any woods, you should
| always wear high socks, and do a full body check for ticks after.
|
| Deer ticks can be as small as a few grains of sand, and near
| undetectable if they latch on unless you have sharp eyes.
|
| Obviously they can transmit lymes.
|
| I had a close encounter a few years ago, but very luckily giant
| rings appeared around the bite site, making it a very easy
| diagnosis.
|
| That only happens in 30% of cases though. The rest likely have no
| idea, and over time the disease will work it's way into your
| nervous system, causing permanent damage if not treated quickly
| enough.
| mauvehaus wrote:
| I would get this vaccine yesterday if it were available.
|
| Shit, if I were planning on spending a lot of time in the woods
| (like, more than I already do), I would go to a vet and see if
| they would give me the one that's for dogs. Untreated Lyme
| messes people up.
|
| A whole bunch of people I knew who thru-hiked the Appalachian
| Trail in 2010 got Lyme. I did not get it, but I don't think I
| was appreciably more cautious than the people I directly knew
| who did. Part of what makes Lyme scary is the randomness of who
| gets it and how easy it is to not know you've contracted it.
|
| Fortunately, hikers are at least generally aware that it's a
| possibility and know to seek treatment for it specifically.
| Awareness in the general population is probably still much
| lower.
|
| P.S. Hello from WRJ, VT, fellow New Englander!
| White_Wolf wrote:
| I'm not sure if this is up to date and anything else was done
| in terms of research but
| https://scopeblog.stanford.edu/2020/03/30/lyme-disease-
| bacte...
| computer23 wrote:
| That article was written by long time conspiracy theorist
| Kris Newby.
|
| Newby is the producer of a propaganda documentary for
| "chronic Lyme" called Under Our Skin, and also spreads
| conspiracy theories about bioweapons:
|
| https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/a-review-of-under-our-
| skin-...
|
| https://theconversation.com/no-lyme-disease-is-not-an-
| escape...
|
| The article itself is about in vitro experiments funded by
| other chronic lyme conspiracy theorists. It has nothing to
| do with human disease.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| A vet isn't going to risk their license or take on the
| liability of treating a human with vaccines for dogs.
| thefz wrote:
| This is enormously good news for mountain bikers too.
| 300bps wrote:
| A few houses ago we lived on 2.5 heavily wooded acres in a tick
| endemic area. Probably got 30 ticks on me from working in the
| woods.
|
| Never got Lyme disease though by following what you said -
| check for ticks at the end of each day. It really is true... if
| they are latched for less than 36 hours you are good.
|
| My son on the other hand had Lyme disease when he was about 6
| with a found tick followed by obvious bulls eye rash in the
| middle of his back. The one time we didn't check him at end of
| the day... 30 days of amoxicillin and he's been fine the past
| seven years.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I've pulled four of the little bastards off me, this summer (so
| far).
|
| They have gotten much worse, in the last few years (Long
| Island, NY).
|
| I also know a few (several) folks that have had _very_ bad,
| life-changing debilitation, as a result of Lyme. I 'm aware of
| one (that I never met), who died from complications of Lyme. I
| also have a family member, that got it pretty badly, recovered
| completely, and now seems to be immune.
|
| I'm having myself checked at the doctor, next week.
| voisin wrote:
| How are you getting checked? I understood (perhaps wrongly)
| that the blood tests are only accurate well beyond the window
| with which the medications are effective, creating a chicken
| and egg issue.
| inter_netuser wrote:
| why is there a window? people report recovery after several
| years with an appropriate treatment.
| voisin wrote:
| Recovery with Lyme isn't always forever. It apparently
| goes into remission and comes back later. Not sure if
| anyone knows why or how it does that. AFAIK it is only
| cured if treated very quickly, before the blood tests are
| accurate.
| saalweachter wrote:
| The bacteria can cause long-lasting damage, basically,
| and the symptoms of Lyme disease can just be that damage.
| istjohn wrote:
| The bacteria migrates throughout the body over time,
| including into the brain and spine, so it's easier to
| eliminate when treated promptly.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Not exactly sure. I made an appointment. First time I've
| done that. It may just be a "put it on the record" visit,
| with follow-ups in some months.
|
| My relative didn't find out, until he had a cantaloupe for
| a kneecap. They tested the fluid, and found lots of Lyme.
|
| He's always getting bit. Deer pass through his backyard, on
| a regular.
|
| He said the treatment was anticlimactic. A course of oral
| antibiotics.
| serial_dev wrote:
| After a couple of days in the mountains, I found four
| ticks, and one bite started to turn red after two weeks.
|
| I went to the doctor, she said the tests at this phase are
| unreliable, my bite could be Lyme, but could be something
| else too (the bulls eye rings didn't form yet). She said
| the pragmatic approach is too treat it as if it was Lyme
| and take antibiotics. It's better to take some antibiotics
| than wait for the symptoms (which are not always easy to
| assign to lyme).
| rgrieselhuber wrote:
| I've heard that Fry Labs is one of the only labs to do
| blood testing, but I haven't tried them myself:
|
| https://frylabs.com/resources/lyme-disease-and-detection/
| computer23 wrote:
| Fry Labs is listed on Quackwatch's list of "Laboratories
| Doing Nonstandard Laboratory Tests":
| https://quackwatch.org/related/tests/nonstandard/
|
| The CDC warns against nonstandard testing: https://www.cd
| c.gov/lyme/diagnosistesting/labtest/otherlab/i...
|
| You'd be surprised how little regulation that some lab
| testing gets: https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/new-fda-
| regulatory-role-thr...
|
| There are a lot more predatory labs than Theranos out
| there...
| ce4 wrote:
| There's no definitive accredited lab check as far as I
| know. At least here in Germany the official serologic tests
| for late stage Lyme can come back negative for years until
| the disease really progresses badly - even cerebrospinal
| fluid results may be normal despite neurological symptoms.
| My specialist uses elispot lab tests for Borrelia b. OspA,
| antigen and LFA-1 markers.
|
| Other practitioners use westernblot lab results and
| differential diagnosis.
| inter_netuser wrote:
| have you seen recent immunostaining result? albeit in
| research, amazingly you can actually see the bacteria.
|
| They claim it can be cultured too.
|
| https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fneur.2021.6
| 280...
| alfon wrote:
| Thanks for that link, super interesting.
|
| Check out also Dualdur, received 3MEur from EU in 2018.
|
| https://lymediagnostics.com/why-dd/
| ghaff wrote:
| I haven't seen any recently but they were really bad earlier
| in the summer in Massachusetts to the point that there were a
| couple walks that I was doing regularly that I decided to
| forgo for a bit. And anecdotally I've heard a similar story
| from others. (Fortunately, everything I've seen have been the
| larger dog ticks.)
| Dumblydorr wrote:
| Small edit: The article claims 3/4 have the circular rash, not
| 30%.
| pwenzel wrote:
| Here are a few pictures of a deer tick that bit me in 2020. I
| got pretty sick from it. Penny and ruler for scale:
|
| https://imgur.com/a/xgF5Zw2
|
| Its body quit tiny is just over 1mm in width.
|
| I got it either sitting in a field of grass that was a few
| inches tall, or walking through some brush for 5 minutes a
| Minneapolis park. I wasn't out doing anything exciting like
| hunting for morels in old growth forests.
| ipqk wrote:
| For those of us with dark skin, the bullseye ring may be there
| but be imperceptible, making it even harder to diagnose.
| sva_ wrote:
| > That only happens in 30% of cases though.
|
| According to the CDC, its 70-80%[0].
|
| [0] https://www.cdc.gov/lyme/signs_symptoms/index.html
| inter_netuser wrote:
| Not the first time CDC would be wrong.
|
| EDIT: why downvote facts?
|
| Recent example on a hot topic: "CDC reverses itself and says
| guidelines it posted on coronavirus airborne transmission
| were wrong"
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/09/21/cdc-
| covid-a...
| polynox wrote:
| Being wrong is the essence of science.
|
| By contrast, lyme disease is (1) more than 40 years old,
| (2) not contagious, and (3) has no political headwinds.
| There is little reason to distrust CDC on this.
| inter_netuser wrote:
| Several states felt it was necessary to pass laws
| regarding Lyme and provide immunity to physicians willing
| to treat long haul covid...errr long haul lyme patients.
|
| Seems rather naive to presume they had to pass new laws
| because Lyme has no political headwinds. It has plenty of
| controversy around it, for better or worse.
| polynox wrote:
| I was able to substantiate your comment about the laws
| being changed in two California bills (2013 AB1278 and
| 2005 AB592) amending BPC 2234.1 that appears to relax
| restrictions about treatment of "persistent" Lyme
| disease.
|
| I do not think it is relevant to the point in this thread
| that is discussing whether Lyme disease does or does not
| result in a bullseye rash (Erythema Migrans or EM), and
| the CDC claiming that in 70-80% of cases the rash is
| present, which you baselessly disputed and edited your
| comment to accuse those of downvoting "facts".
|
| As an example of what "evidence" might be, a 2009 paper
| [1] in _Current Problems in Dermatology_ refers:
|
| > EM is by far the most frequent manifestation of Lyme
| borreliosis. In the USA, more than 70% of patients
| registered with Lyme borreliosis had EM [28]. Among 1,471
| patients shown to have Lyme borreliosis in an
| epidemiologic study in southern Sweden, EM was seen in
| 77% of all cases, and was accompanied by other signs of
| the disease such as nervous system involvement,
| arthritis, lymphocytoma and/or carditis in only 6.5% [29]
|
| You can dispute those referred studies if you wish, but I
| think it would be hard to argue that CDC's statement that
| Lyme disease is characterized by EM in 70-80% of cases is
| untrue.
|
| [1] Strle, F., & Stanek, G. (2009). Clinical
| Manifestations and Diagnosis of Lyme Borreliosis. Lyme
| Borreliosis, 51-110. doi:10.1159/000213070
| VHRanger wrote:
| The downvotes are because you contradict a sourced claim
| with no sources then just say that the people citing
| research are wrong without backing
| sva_ wrote:
| 16% without erythema migrans ("lyme rash")
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12543291/
|
| 80% develop EM
| https://www.aafp.org/afp/2012/0601/p1086.html
|
| You can easily find a lot of sources in this ballpark.
| gmiller123456 wrote:
| You should provide evidence, and when you go back and edit
| your response to do so, that evidence should be relevant to
| the discussion at hand.
|
| There's a huge difference between data on a disease that's
| been studied for over 40 years, vs one that's only been
| around for a few months.
|
| If you think the CDC got it's facts wrong on Lyme disease,
| it's as simple as saying "This source disagrees", and
| provide the source. Jumping to the conclusion that your
| unnamed source is more accurate than any other is another
| problem itself.
| spicybright wrote:
| Huh, didn't know. Just quoting my dermatologist with that.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| I think the "on the ground" answer varies depending on you,
| where you are and what insects are around. 70% of deer tick
| bites may carry Lyme, but the percentage of insect bites with
| red rings that are Lyme is probably different. If you're
| walking through northeast pine forest or low density suburban
| woods, assume Lyme!
|
| Red rings from bites are not uncommon in general. I know I
| get a reaction from horse flies that looks to professionals
| like a potential deer tick bite with Lyme.
| moron4hire wrote:
| Those of us who just went through the "Brood X" cicada
| emergence are now going through a glut of something called
| "oak mites", which apparently feed on the cicada eggs, but
| also just get everywhere. They are kind of like chiggers,
| burrowing under the skin, and are too small to see with the
| naked eye. The "bites" are particularly itchy and can also
| cause red splotching that may appear ring-like sometimes. I
| had a minor freak-out the first time I saw a splotch on my
| 3-yr-old's back, but it didn't spread and the blotchiness
| actually went away rather quickly. Luckily, these welts
| don't seem to last as long as mosquito bites.
|
| Also, a tick-bite splotch doesn't always have to be ring-
| shaped.
| riedel wrote:
| Actually Lyme is a huge problem in southern Germany as well.
| Actually it seems that a lot of inflammatory joint problems
| stem from it that are often wrongly diagnosed.
| pluc wrote:
| and ticks in Germany are massive compared to the ones we get
| in North America.
| rags2riches wrote:
| Which lyme carrying species are you comparing? For Ixodes
| scapularis compared to Ixodes ricinus I see adult female
| sizes of 2.5 mm vs 3.6 mm. Not a huge difference. Are you
| sure you're not comparing larvae or nymphs to adults or
| even gorged adults?
| spiderfarmer wrote:
| And brain problems, discovered years later.
| hobo_mark wrote:
| Tall socks and trousers sure, but of course they'll get
| wherever. The only time I had one of them little suckers I only
| found out the next day... under my wristwatch!
| gkilmain wrote:
| My experience with ticks: Closer to the home is where you're
| going to find the small ones. I've had two on me. First one was
| easy to spot it looked like a freckle on my knee. The second
| one I felt the bite (thought it was an itch) and it was on my
| inner thigh. Not sure if I would have noticed the second one if
| it wasn't for its haphazard bite. Both latched on when I was in
| / near the garden.
| Grazester wrote:
| I go hiking a lot in the Hudson area of New York and have my
| concerns about ticks too. As you said, tall sock are
| recommended. I also use permethrin on all my lower items of
| clothing including shoes. I sometimes also use Off on my
| exposed skin areas and then check for ticks after my hikes.
|
| My wife was once bitten by something through her pants. That
| left a small ring. I do doubt it was a tick though.
|
| My sister on the other hand was bitten by something a few years
| ago, she thinks it was a spider. There were multiple red rings
| extending far and she started having other reactions and needed
| hospitalization. They pumped her so full of anti-biotics(was on
| a drip for days), it left her digestive system screwy for
| months but at least she does not have Lyme disease now.
| ericcholis wrote:
| Lint rollers after a hike/walk isn't a bad idea either.
| Loughla wrote:
| I'm convinced you can become and/or grow immune to Lyme,
| though. It's purely anecdotal.
|
| I grew up where we built our house (deep, deep in the woods). I
| spent my childhood on the farm there. Ticks were a constant
| menace, I honestly don't know how many hundreds I pulled off
| myself as a child.
|
| When I was able, my spouse and I purchased it and built a
| house. 6 months after moving in, my spouse developed Lymes
| disease. I have no explanation, other than I am immune to the
| ticks in the area (or I have had it my entire life with zero
| symptoms maybe?).
| uncertainrhymes wrote:
| When you were young, those ticks may not have had lyme. More
| importantly, you removed them. They have to be attached for
| 24 hours before the bacteria comes back out of the tick's
| gut.
| misja111 wrote:
| No, removing them early just reduces the chance of getting
| Lyme. There's no such thing as a 24 hour barrier.
| istjohn wrote:
| The article states there is a 36 hour barrier. Do you
| have a source?
| misja111 wrote:
| E.g.
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4278789/ "in
| animal models, transmission can occur in <16 hours, and
| the minimum attachment time for transmission of infection
| has never been established"
|
| or
|
| https://www.lymedisease.org/tick-lyme-transmission-time/
| "Study finds nymphal ticks can transmit Lyme within 12
| hours"
| inter_netuser wrote:
| Many report chronic symptoms, who have been laughed at for
| decades.
|
| Chronic persistence (at least in some cases) has now been
| proven.
|
| Took someone with chronic lyme to donate the brain for
| research:
| https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fneur.2021.6280...
| bobo_legos wrote:
| Kris Kirstofferson was told by doctors that his memory loss
| was either Alzheimer's or Dementia. Another doctor finally
| decided to test him for lyme. Turns out he he probably got
| bitten by a tick shooting a movie 10 years prior to the
| positive test. https://www.rollingstone.com/feature/kris-
| kristofferson-an-o...
| loceng wrote:
| Huh, I wonder if my executive dysfunction in part could be
| Lyme disease. I was bitten 10+ years ago - had to pull it
| off, though it hadn't been there long as it hadn't latched
| on deeply yet - it did cause a small ring; I did get and
| take short course of antibiotics immediately after as far
| as I remember.
|
| I've heard common bloodwork done is very poor at detecting
| it but is there a better or sure way of detecting it?
| [deleted]
| istjohn wrote:
| The article states that Lyme disease is only transmitted
| if the tic latches on for over 36 hours. The bacteria is
| latent in the tic's gut until blood is ingested, at which
| point it takes 36 hours for the bacteria to multiply and
| migrate to the tic's salivary glands.
| loceng wrote:
| Ah thanks - well, perhaps the mark was just my body
| reacting to its beginning attempt to attach.
| computer23 wrote:
| It wasn't Lyme. Kris Kirstofferson is a victim of quackery:
|
| https://respectfulinsolence.com/2016/07/08/kris-
| kristofferso...
| capitainenemo wrote:
| Hm. That blog post claims "chronic lyme disease does not
| exist"
|
| https://news.tulane.edu/pr/study-finds-evidence-
| persistent-l...
|
| I'm reading up on all this just now due to the HN front
| page articles, but these 2 seem to be in contradiction.
| darkerside wrote:
| I'd rather see treatment than a vaccine. I do believe most cases
| of Lyme are trivial, but some can linger and cause horrible
| issues. Disulfiram sounds very promising.
| vinni2 wrote:
| Too late for me I found a tick on my shoulder and I tested
| positive for the Lyme disease. It was treated with antibiotics
| but my understanding is it can come back.
| alfon wrote:
| Any reason why this injection of OspA Monoclonal Antibodies
| wouldn't help in late disseminated Lyme disease?.
|
| My understanding is that very tough cases of neurological Lyme
| disease often benefit greatly from IVIG. Wouldn't this be a more
| targeted version of IVIG?
| Whitespace wrote:
| I caught Lyme earlier this year. Recently moved to upstate NY (20
| miles from Lyme, CT) and tick checks are a daily thing. Found an
| adult embedded in my side. Developed a 103oF fever and fatigue.
| Dr. took blood for the Lyme test but didn't wait for a positive
| and prescribed 2 weeks of Doxycycline.
|
| A few days later I found a bullseye rash on my leg (not near the
| bite area) which pretty much confirmed it.
|
| I felt 100% around 5-7 days after developing fever symptoms.
| technothrasher wrote:
| > Recently moved to upstate NY (20 miles from Lyme, CT)
|
| Wait, what? The only part of NY 20 miles from Lyme is the tip
| of Long Island. It's at least 60 miles from anything upstate.
| Whitespace wrote:
| Ahh you're correct, I'm 90 miles from Lyme, not 20.
| doctorhandshake wrote:
| For folks in NYC, 'upstate' is used loosely to mean 'a place
| in NY state you access via queens or the bronx'.
| vimy wrote:
| The tests look for antibodies which only are measurable after
| weeks so a test immediately after a tick bite is useless.
| tcoff91 wrote:
| If you collect the tick itself, is there a way to check the
| tick instead of checking the person that's bit?
| vimy wrote:
| Yeah, you can send it to a lab. This should be the default
| move after every tick bite.
| nikkinana wrote:
| There's also a treatment that's extremely effective.
| giantg2 wrote:
| There's also the researcher using crispr to give mice immunity to
| lyme, thus interrupting the life cycle. It would be great to wipe
| it out that way.
| inter_netuser wrote:
| Please link.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I saw it on Netflix, but here is a similar article.
|
| https://elemental.medium.com/the-mouse-cure-48f81e7a3fec
| [deleted]
| mrfusion wrote:
| I've found the biggest places to watch out for ticks are where
| not many people go. Little travelled trails. The heavily
| trafficked areas seem to have way less ticks.
|
| My working theory is the deer to human ratio of an area
| determines how many deer ticks.
| patall wrote:
| My grandma just got Lyme with pretty high certainty in her own
| garden. In suburbia in a million people city. With a
| deer:people ratio of about 0.00.
|
| From my understanding, ticks can be in any type of grass. If
| you somehow touch grass of any type, be it walking, sitting or
| hand-mowing, there is a chance of picking one up. Sure, there
| are few ticks in very populated areas, but I would rather guess
| that more people equates to more likelyness that someone else
| already picked up the ticks in that area. And obviously: there
| is less grass were many people go.
| mrfusion wrote:
| Interesting. Maybe my formula only works for rural and
| suburbs. Maybe get enough people and they become the vector
| for the ticks.
| kortex wrote:
| My partner got a bullseye-inducing tick byte in our front yard
| in suburban upstate NY. Hardly little-traveled.
|
| The absolute quantity of deer is more important than the
| deer/human ratio. Lawns make it super easy for deer to migrate,
| human presence suppresses wolves and other predators, and mice
| love our trash, houses, bird feeders, and pet food.
| mrfusion wrote:
| I'd wonder though if deer use your front yard more than you?
| Especially in the pre dawn hours.
|
| Even if you garden you're probably only out there a couple
| times a week?
|
| But you could be right that quantity of deer is more
| important.
|
| BTW have you considered guniea fowl? Or at least something
| like this might help. https://www.consumerreports.org/pest-
| control/bait-boxes-are-...
| kortex wrote:
| I am pretty they do, while I haven't seen them in my yard,
| they love my neighbor's ~1acre lawn abutting woods across
| the street. I see them hanging out there all hours of the
| day.
|
| I actually just learned about guinea fowl elsewhere in this
| thread! Definitely will be looking into it.
|
| I also started doing the permethrin soaked cotton balls in
| tubes. Mice collect the cotton for their nest and it kills
| ticks. Also our dog gets tick-killing meds and takes out a
| non-trivial amount just by collecting and killing them.
| bstpierre wrote:
| Based on our experience, with anywhere from 2 to about 15
| in a flock, guineas aren't super effective at reducing
| ticks. They're also very noisy, leave big turds all over
| the place, and at least in our rural New England area,
| serve to attract predators.
|
| Our spring "dog tick season" has become intense the last
| couple of years. At the height of the season this spring
| the daily tick count from grooming the dog was anywhere
| from 10 (a light day) to a high of 27 ticks acquired
| after an hour-long hike. When it's this bad, I can pick
| up four just walking across the front lawn. During that
| season they're mostly not deer ticks, so fortunately
| they're bigger and much easier to find, and at least
| according to most literature I've seen, dog ticks do not
| transmit Lyme.
| mrfusion wrote:
| They could probably crawl over from your neighbors yard.
| Not sure how far they travel. Or hitch a ride on mice?
|
| Wow if tick killing meds exist for dogs maybe we could
| get deer on those. Problem solved?
| at_a_remove wrote:
| I know when I bring my deer into the vet for their annual
| checkup, they'll probably offer the shot pretty soon.
| mrfusion wrote:
| You could mix it into food or salt licks or even hire
| people to hit them with medicine darts.
|
| I thought I've heard of that for deer birth control
| before?
| at_a_remove wrote:
| Edible vaccines are not easy. There's a reason you are
| still getting injections.
|
| Shooting them with darts, well, those would be a hell of
| a lot more expensive than bullets. It seems ... fraught
| with a lot of potential for unexpected effects.
| a-saleh wrote:
| Yep, last summer I knew more people in my friend group that had
| lyme disease than people with covid.
| willvarfar wrote:
| Have my TBE jabs.
|
| But just last week I had another course of penicillin to treat
| Lyme disease.
|
| Where i live, ticks are prevalent and this year seems to be
| particularly bad for just Lyme disease. I know four others who
| also have it, which seems higher than normal.
|
| A vaccine would be most welcome.
| [deleted]
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| I think they HAVE lime disease.
| inter_netuser wrote:
| This one is a real weird forum. Class action against car
| manufacturer, Toyota, because of 200-400 injuries from airbags?
| GOOD!
|
| Class action against any medical product? VERY BAD!
|
| It's like tainted blood transfusions, glyphosate, vioxx, fen-
| phen, thalidomide just never happened.
|
| I'm guessing the demographics is on the younger and still thinks
| they are made from steel.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| There were 1.4M doses administered:
|
| > The FDA found only 59 such adverse events out of 1.4 million
| doses administered, and did not find direct scientific evidence
| that the Lyme vaccine had caused them. Still, the questions
| over possible unintended effects were enough to dampen
| enthusiasm, especially after 121 Lymerix recipients filed a
| class-action lawsuit against the vaccine's manufacturer.
|
| Reminds me of the entire clusterfuck around the AstraZeneca
| coronavirus vaccine, with the difference that politicians this
| time at least pushed for getting vaccinated simply to stop the
| pandemic.
| rvz wrote:
| > Reminds me of the entire clusterfuck around the AstraZeneca
| coronavirus vaccine, with the difference that politicians
| this time at least pushed for getting vaccinated simply to
| stop the pandemic.
|
| The media in the UK (Especially the BBC) tried to gaslight
| the British public with the AZ vaccine and using the 'tHErE
| iS moStLy nO eVIdEncE' trick repeatedly whilst the reports
| and concerns of blood clots forming in young people kept
| increasing.
|
| It was enough from them to not recommend the AstraZeneca
| vaccine to them and instead give them Pfizer-BioNTech
| vaccine.
| resoluteteeth wrote:
| Imagine if it was impossible for anyone to buy a car ever
| because when cars first went on the market 59 out of 1.4
| million people who bought them got joint pain that may not have
| even been connected with the cars.
| drstewart wrote:
| Let's see how self-driving regulation go first before you say
| that.
| inter_netuser wrote:
| so the product was so unprofitable it couldn't cover
| liability insurance with only 59 claims out of 1 millionn
| units sold?
|
| seems it was just not viable commercially.
| resoluteteeth wrote:
| If we've created a system where vaccines aren't
| commercially viable, that seems like a problem in itself.
| matkoniecz wrote:
| You are arguing with strawman, noone said this.
| CorrectHorseBat wrote:
| They administered over 1 million doses in about a year. 10,000
| doses was the sales projection after a misinformation campaign.
| cushychicken wrote:
| There _was_ a shot to prevent Lyme disease developed in the late
| 90s, but antivax threw a fit about it, and it was discontinued.
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/lyme/prev/vaccine.html
| istjohn wrote:
| As the article describes, the story is more complicated than
| that:
|
| _> Despite its shortcomings, Lymerix was initially popular. By
| July 2000, more than one million doses had been distributed.
| But safety concerns eventually sank the vaccine. While the FDA
| panel that approved Lymerix did so unanimously, several members
| wondered whether the vaccine might cause an autoimmune reaction
| leading to arthritis. A section of OspA resembles a human
| protein that modulates the immune response, and the concern of
| some on the FDA panel was that, after vaccination, the immune
| system would overcorrect and fight off not only the OspA
| protein that covered the bacteria, but also that human protein.
| Nothing like this occurred in Lymerix's clinical trials.
|
| > Shortly after Lymerix hit the market, those worries emerged
| nonetheless. Some recipients reported joint pain and arthritis,
| symptoms they blamed on the vaccine itself. The FDA found only
| 59 such adverse events out of 1.4 million doses administered,
| and did not find direct scientific evidence that the Lyme
| vaccine had caused them. Still, the questions over possible
| unintended effects were enough to dampen enthusiasm, especially
| after 121 Lymerix recipients filed a class-action lawsuit
| against the vaccine's manufacturer. SmithKline Beecham,
| projecting sales of only 10,000 doses in 2002, decided to
| withdraw Lymerix from the market in February of that year. (The
| lawsuit was settled one year later, with more than $1 million
| paid out by the pharmaceutical company to cover the prosecuting
| lawyers' fees, but no financial compensation was awarded to the
| plaintiffs.)_
|
| The new treatment in development avoids the problem by directly
| injecting antibodies instead of stimulating the immune system
| to create the antibodies as Lymerix did.
| est31 wrote:
| In addition to the Pfizer/Valneva vaccine mentioned in the
| article, there is also one from Sanofi in development:
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41541-020-0183-8
|
| https://www.bc.cas.cz/en/news/news-detail/5483-a-new-lyme-va...
| jemurray wrote:
| I know this is about Lyme disease, but let me add another word of
| caution while we are discussing ticks. Two years ago I was bit by
| the Lone Star tick. Since that time I developed an allergy to all
| red meat. It was hard to diagnose and a few of the doctors I
| worked with along the years still don't believe its true. If your
| interested in learning more search for Alpha Gal. There is an
| excellent Radio Lab podcast about it.
| Dylanfm wrote:
| This also occurs in Australia, resulting in mammalian meat
| allergy. Some more information here
| https://allergy.org.au/patients/insect-allergy-bites-and-sti...
| fullstop wrote:
| I was bit by one of those about ten years ago, but no unusual
| effects thankfully.
| crypot wrote:
| I was bit by a tick in 2010. I pulled it off my forearm and it
| left a protrusion that lasted about 2 weeks. No rings. I got
| sick with a flu around this time. Went to the doctor, the lyme
| test came back negative.
|
| Shortly after this I started to develop lesions in my mouth and
| scalp. Then they spread to my entire body. 6 months later got a
| diagnosis of an autoimmune blistering disease. The specialist
| said it was a usually a disease for old people, very unusual
| for an otherwise healthy 35 year old to develop it. 8 years of
| oral antibiotics and some steroids for flare ups and I was in
| remission.
|
| In my opinion, everyone should be leery of tick bites.
| gknoy wrote:
| > 8 years of oral antibiotics
|
| Holy cow. That is a frightening amount of time to have to
| take those.
| wildmanx wrote:
| And a prime recipe for antibiotic resistance to develop.
|
| If an MD prescribed antibiotics for that long a continuous
| time period, they should lose their license.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > It was hard to diagnose and a few of the doctors I worked
| with along the years still don't believe its true.
|
| Did they offer alternative explanations or did they simply
| stonewall you and deny your reported symptoms?
|
| One of the lessons I learned far too late in life was to not
| waste time with doctors who don't believe your reported
| symptoms.
|
| On some level I understand how it happens -- Doctors inevitably
| see a number of hypochondriacs and people with psychosomatic
| illnesses who need to be handled delicately to avoid further
| entrenching their perceived illnesses. However, when you're
| having legitimate symptoms and your own doctor tries to deny
| the symptoms without offering further diagnostics, it's time to
| cut ties and move on.
|
| It can take a few tries to find a good doctor.
| retzkek wrote:
| I've generally had better experiences with DOs than MDs when
| it comes to listening and working with me to understand how
| and what I feel. On the other hand some people may prefer the
| more "clinical" (not sure if that's the best word) approach
| of MDs. So just something to keep in mind if you're unhappy
| with your current doctor.
|
| edit: For those not aware, a DO is fully licensed to practice
| medicine (in the US at least), no different from an MD. Don't
| confuse them with chiropractors (DC) or similar. https://en.w
| ikipedia.org/wiki/Osteopathic_medicine_in_the_Un...
| NortySpock wrote:
| DO: Doctor of Osteopathy , an osteopathic physician
|
| Thought I'd de-acronym-it for you; and yes, my MD father
| tells me a DO is just as good as an MD.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| And they're far too eager to dismiss it as psychomatic if it
| doesn't fit their pigeonholes.
| inter_netuser wrote:
| This cannot be repeated enough: "few of the doctors I worked
| with along the years still don't believe its true"
|
| a medical opinion is just that. an _opinion_. consensus often
| takes decades to change.
| chubot wrote:
| Yeah I think of it almost as a mathematical problem. There
| are simply more ways for a human body to go wrong than any
| number of doctors possibly can comprehend :) There is a very
| very long tail of diseases and disorders.
|
| So it's not just easy to find something that ONE doctor has
| never heard of or seen, but you can find many that ALL
| doctors are unfamiliar with!
| gilbetron wrote:
| We, as patients, pass around these apocryphal stories around,
| but don't look at the opposite experience of doctors. Doctors
| constantly, and I mean multiple times per day, get patients
| in that tell them their symptoms are due to disease or
| condition or complex X. Time and again, the patient is
| completely wrong. No, you don't have cancer, your lymph node
| hurts because it is fighting off an infection, and besides if
| it was cancer, the node wouldn't hurt. No, you don't have
| lyme disease, you're sore because you started gardening again
| and you are 50. No, you don't have an ulcer, you're just
| eating too much ice cream before going to bed.
|
| As humans, we forget about the times we were wrong, and also
| don't share those stories. "I went to the doctor thinking I
| was dying of cancer, but it turns out I'm allergic to
| mushrooms" is much less likely to be passed around as a story
| than, "No doctors would listen to me until one did and tested
| me and found out I have Lyme disease."
| inter_netuser wrote:
| Hilarious you brought this up: "No, you don't have an
| ulcer, you're just eating too much ice cream before going
| to bed."
|
| Reflux is a very common food allergy symptom and milk is
| one of the most common allergen, if not THE most common.
|
| I've had 3 or 4 scopes that showed some mild inflammation,
| and GIs were simply lost. I've managed to locate a 90 year
| old allergist who probably began practicing before there
| was benadryl. After recounting the symptoms I was told
| "it's milk. it's always milk". I was taken aback, how can
| anyone be so sure? Literally 5 minutes later that was
| confirmed by a skin-prick test.
|
| Most physicians are garbage. The allergist was quite
| thorough.
|
| The billing rate to dismiss you in 30 seconds pays about
| the same as a 30 min appointment. The incentives just
| aren't there.
| gilbetron wrote:
| I agree with the systemic problem that our healthcare
| system doesn't want to get to the bottom of symptoms. It
| drives me crazy, especially the "most cancer is treatable
| if caught early, but no we won't give you a diagnostic
| test to actually catch cancer early". I have direct
| experience with this, pushing through multiple doctors
| that ended with my thyroid cancer diagnosis.
|
| My doctor at the time was actually really good, not
| because he was good at diagnosing, but he had enough
| experience to recognize his inability to do so and would
| always send me to an expert. He literally was 100% wrong
| about all of my major diagnoses (my hurt knee actually
| was a torn ACL, my abdominal pain actually was a hernia,
| my throat nodule actually was cancer), but he always sent
| me to a specialist to be sure. And he knew really good
| specialists. "I don't think it is X, but lets have a
| specialist verify" was his common refrain.
|
| But, yeah, the system sucks now.
| Dumblydorr wrote:
| A doctor's opinion on disease isn't merely an opinion, it's
| an educated guess based on experience and qualifications. New
| diseases and research are constantly appearing, thousands of
| articles are written each year. We can't expect doctors to
| know everything, but we can expect them to have more informed
| opinions, on average, than non-doctors.
|
| I say this because there's a rising trend of anti-
| intellectualism and distrust of doctors in the US, which
| leads to massive self inflicted wounds in Covid and vaccines.
| Doctors aren't infallible, but they're far better than random
| online sources.
| nitrogen wrote:
| _trend of anti-intellectualism and distrust of doctors_
|
| As someone who knows a practicing doctor who is also anti-
| vax, these are orthogonal issues. Sometimes, distrusting a
| _specific_ doctor is the more intellectual approach.
| inter_netuser wrote:
| You'd be surprised how many physicians and nurses refuse
| vaccination. You'll just never hear about it. AMA is one
| powerful beast, I wish I had a union like that.
|
| However, sometimes fun little things like this happen
| that show their true colors:
|
| "Starting in early 2003, the United States government
| started a program to vaccinate _500,000_ volunteer health
| care professionals throughout the country. Recipients
| were healthcare workers who would be _first-line
| responders in the event of a bioterrorist attack_. Many
| healthcare workers refused, worried about vaccine side
| effects, and healthcare systems refused to participate.
| Fewer than _40,000 actually received the vaccine_.[29] "
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox_vaccine
|
| over 90% refused.
| wbl wrote:
| The smallpox vaccine has a non-trivial amount of danger
| and the only smallpox in the world is guarded very
| closely.
| arn wrote:
| That doesn't mean distrust of vaccination in general - at
| least by doctors. It was for a potential bioterrorist
| attack. It perhaps more reflects the low likelihood or
| belief that there would be a small pox attack.
|
| Meanwhile, 96% of physicians are vaccinated against COVID
| - https://www.ama-assn.org/press-center/press-
| releases/ama-sur...
| inter_netuser wrote:
| If you assume the low likelyhood of the attack was the
| reason, that means 90% of those physicians could be
| lying. The stated reason for refusal was concerns about
| side effects. It's in the quote.
|
| What you stated as a fact, 96% vaccination rate, is
| actually a self-reported survey.
|
| Why do a survey when public health CDC records could
| simply be matched with the physician licensing
| registrars?
|
| Seems an automatic search like that would save physicians
| their valuable time, aren't they very busy with a
| pandemic right now? Instead of hard data from CDC, we get
| self-reported, likely anonymous, self-reported survey.
|
| What do they have to hide?
| arn wrote:
| It's always cost-benefit. Relative risk of side effect
| directly relates to likelihood.
|
| Risk of side effects vs benefit of vaccine.
|
| I am not likely to take an HIV vaccine, since my personal
| chance of contracting HIV is incredibly low. So any side
| effect isn't "worth it" -- even a sore arm. But that
| doesn't mean I'm anti-vaccine.
|
| I also don't wear a bullet proof vest around because it's
| too heavy ("side effect"). Does that mean I'm anti-bullet
| proof vest? No. But I would wear a bullet proof vest in a
| war zone -- even if it's heavy.
|
| If there was a widespread small pox outbreak in the U.S.,
| I'm certain more than 10% of physicians would take the
| vaccine. Does that mean they were lying before? No.
| inter_netuser wrote:
| did you read my comment?
|
| covid 96% status is from an anonymous survey.
|
| Why not just get CDC to provide actual hard data? Surely
| they keep vaccination records?
|
| Should vaccination status of physician, as verified by
| the CDC, be public data?
| arn wrote:
| Because even if I did point to official stats, you would
| say they are just lying?
|
| A few months prior to the AMA survey, Long Term Care
| Facilities reported a 75% vaccination rate amongst
| physicians at their facilities. So presumably higher now.
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7030a2.htm
| nitrogen wrote:
| _The stated reason for refusal was concerns about side
| effects._
|
| As another comment already mentioned, smallpox vaccines
| (at least historically) tended to have undesirable side
| effects, like permanent scars. Smallpox vaccination is
| probably not a good proxy for vaccination overall. It's
| not worth getting vaccinated for smallpox unless you
| expect a decent risk of exposure.
|
| _What do they have to hide?_
|
| Privacy should be the default.
| inter_netuser wrote:
| they have a monopoly license, these things come with
| strings.
|
| Do you want to go to anti-vaxx doctor?
| mwigdahl wrote:
| I'd qualify that: "...we can expect them to have more
| informed opinions, on average, _for any random condition_,
| than non-doctors."
|
| The thing I think you're missing is that the resources to
| do good, deep research on a condition do exist, and the
| sufferer has very strong motivation to do that research and
| become very well informed in the etiology and treatment
| options. The doctor, less so. They have a lot of patients
| and a lot of demands on their time.
|
| Will a good doctor put in the effort, do the research, and
| come up with a superior treatment plan? Certainly! But not
| all doctors will do this.
|
| If you use the allegory of the pig and the chicken, the
| sufferer is the pig, the doctor is the chicken. It is
| reasonable that the average pig will put in more work and
| be better informed about their own condition than the
| average chicken.
| PebblesRox wrote:
| For anyone else who isn't familiar with the Pig and
| Chicken story:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chicken_and_the_Pig
| wildmanx wrote:
| The English language has a serious deficiency in the term
| "research".
|
| You can do "research" by spending your days in a lab,
| formulating hypotheses, doing experiments, reading
| related academic work, drawing conclusions, publishing
| their findings.
|
| You can do "research" by googling, reading blog posts and
| wikipedia articles, watching Youtube videos, following
| telegram links and possibly reading a popular-science
| book.
|
| These two things are very different activities and
| produce very different bodies of knowledge. "Do your own
| research!" is a common sentiment in Covid skeptic
| circles. It doesn't mean being in a lab. It means
| following links in your Google bubble. That doesn't
| necessarily produce useful knowledge. Properly trained
| researchers are aware of things like confirmation bias,
| selection bias, recollection bias. The "I did my own
| research crowd" is not and suffers seriously from it.
|
| Using the term with the doctor is blurring the line
| between both versions. They don't stand in the lab and
| "do their own research", but they are more educated in
| the medical field than the common patient and have
| context.
| inter_netuser wrote:
| Indeed, there is plenty of distrust. If they are doing such
| a great job though, why the distrust?
|
| I don't know a single person with a significant chronic
| condition in the US who would say the health system and all
| their physicians are amazing and great. Usually you hear
| the exact opposite.
|
| However, stories about that gem of a doctor they finally
| found over the years are very common. Most physician suck,
| not sure why.
|
| Loss of trust is indeed very unfortunate, counterproductive
| and indeed leads to unnecessary suffering.
|
| Physicians are highly educated professionals in a legally
| protected rent-seeking monopoly, backed by a powerful trade
| union, AMA, and the corresponding social
| status/wealth/authority that comes with all that. Seems to
| me it's only fair that the onus is _entirely_ on them to
| win that trust back. I 'm not holding my breath though.
|
| Medicine is just another business. Remember that next time
| you see a doctor.
| wildmanx wrote:
| > I don't know a single person with a significant chronic
| condition in the US who would say the health system and
| all their physicians are amazing and great. Usually you
| hear the exact opposite.
|
| > However, stories about that gem of a doctor they
| finally found over the years are very common. Most
| physician suck, not sure why.
|
| Great example of reporting bias. Nobody goes around
| telling everybody "all is fine". That's not news and
| nobody wants to hear it. Something needs to be special,
| out of the ordinary, a sensation even. "All my doctors
| suck, listen to my 10-minute rant about my odyssey" is
| what people _think_ will be interesting.
|
| Ever heard a news anchor say "Nothing remarkable happened
| today. Have a good evening." Of course not. They will
| report something, no matter how unimportant, ridiculous,
| sensationalist.
| mimined wrote:
| I'm a bit confused here... I thought a vaccine that protected you
| from Lyme disease already existed? I grew up in Latvia, and it
| was pretty common to get that jab. You have to get boosters every
| 5 years or so (which I haven't really done since I moved away)
| but they're supposed to protect you from the encephalitis ticks?
| Sorry if the terminology is wrong here.
|
| I was surprised to know that they didn't bother with that in the
| UK. Then I got even more surprised when I learned that there's
| actually a lot of ticks in Scotland. I don't understand why this
| isn't spoken about more. Back at school they taught you at
| primary school what to do if ou het bitten, how to take it out,
| where to bring it for tests etc.
| vient wrote:
| Tick-borne encephalitis and Lyme disease are different things.
| You are right that there is a vaccine against the first one,
| while Lyme vaccine has an interesting history[1].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyme_disease#Vaccination
| bkanber wrote:
| There used to be a human vaccine for Lyme, but it was pulled
| from market about 20 years ago. Interestingly, this Lyme
| vaccine was one of the first victims of the modern anti-vax
| movement.
| d4rkp4ttern wrote:
| Are tick repellents any good? Any recommendations?
| wepple wrote:
| Permethrin on your clothes ( _not_ on your skin), and deet.
|
| But you'll still get them if you're outside, and should do
| daily tick checks anyway.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Note that permethrin is very toxic to cats. You may want to
| be careful if you have them around.
| quotz wrote:
| Took around 5 unlatched ones off me this summer, about 5 more
| latched and unlatched from my dog and a few off my gf. We live
| close to a national park. Apparently the dog lyme vaccine is the
| same as the one that was approved for humans in the 90s. I wanted
| to buy it and shot myself with it. Theres some folks who say its
| fine.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_Lyme_disease
|
| > Chronic Lyme disease (CLD) is the name used by some people with
| "a broad array of illnesses or symptom complexes for which there
| is no reproducible or convincing scientific evidence of any
| relationship to Borrelia burgdorferi infection" to describe their
| condition and their beliefs about its cause.
|
| (TLDR; lot of misinformation about Lyme disease)
| inter_netuser wrote:
| Take a look:
| https://www.frontiersin.org/files/Articles/628045/fneur-12-6...
|
| These are spirochetes in the brain/spine of a dead patient who
| had proven lyme diagnosis, has been given the standard
| treatment in the past, never recovered, developed dementia,
| died.
|
| Full study:
| https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fneur.2021.6280...
|
| The wikipedia article you are quoting is outdated
| misinformation, please stop spreading it.
|
| the wiki article is indeed misinformation.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| I'd encourage anyone interested to do their own research. The
| scientific consensus today is what is stated in the linked
| wikipedia article. There are lot of myths around Lyme
| disease.
|
| https://eu.delawareonline.com/story/sponsor-
| story/nemours/20...
|
| Myth #5: Lyme disease can have debilitating, lifelong
| effects.
|
| Fact: When treated with antibiotics, Lyme disease, at any
| stage of presentation, is curable.
|
| Myth #6: My child will be at risk for chronic Lyme disease
| once he's infected with Lyme.
|
| Fact: Although some people report lingering or recurrent
| symptoms after Lyme disease, there is no evidence that
| chronic Lyme disease exists. Prolonged courses of antibiotics
| are not needed and can do more harm than good. Follow the
| recommendations of trusted sources such as the Centers for
| Disease Control and the Pediatric Infectious Diseases
| Society.
|
| Myth #7: Alternative therapies are valuable treatment options
| for my child's Lyme disease infection.
|
| Fact: Lyme disease is a hot topic on the internet with many
| people sharing both successes and horror stories about
| alternative treatments, but keep in mind that it is hard to
| verify the legitimacy of internet sources. Instead, talk to
| your child's pediatrician, or consult with a pediatric
| infectious diseases physician at an academic medical center.
| darkerside wrote:
| Garbage misinformation.
|
| Myth #5: Lyme disease can have debilitating, lifelong
| effects.
|
| Fact: When treated with antibiotics, Lyme disease, at any
| stage of presentation, is curable.
|
| The fact provided in response assumes that people are
| getting antibiotic treatment, which is not always the case.
| If you go untreated, then you can have lifelong
| debilitating effects. I don't think even the author of the
| article would dispute that. So why is the author using
| weaselly arguments to imply that you can't? Seems like an
| attempt to confirm a biased judgement.
| akyu wrote:
| >The scientific consensus today is what is stated in the
| linked wikipedia article.
|
| Simply saying this doesn't make it true. This is not true
| and that Wikipedia article is outdated.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| Just like saying it's not true doesn't make it untrue.
| Which is why I'd encourage everybody to do their own
| research, and at least know that there are a lot of
| controversies around this topic.
| inter_netuser wrote:
| Please do YOUR research and read the paper that went thru
| peer review and was published.
|
| once YOU read that paper, please post YOUR peer review
| summary here.
|
| enough with appeals to authority. wikipedia is not even
| an authoritative source to begin with.
| freshpots wrote:
| Are you also a big fan of the scam Dr. Sponaugle and the
| multitude of forums about chronic Lyme, and consider
| those charlatans scammers the truth?
|
| https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7jk9q/rick-sponaugle-
| pots-c...
|
| Edit: Is Lyme-literate another term you and your internet
| friends use?
|
| Look at the case against him: https://mqa-
| internet.doh.state.fl.us/MQASearchServices/Healt...
|
| Scam Dr's like this are causing the FUD you are
| spreading.
| inter_netuser wrote:
| Take a look here: https://www.frontiersin.org/files/Artic
| les/628045/fneur-12-6...
|
| These are spirochetes in the brain/spine of a dead
| patient.
|
| She had proven lyme diagnosis in the past, has been given
| the standard treatment and had good response(!), only to
| relapse, never recover and went on to develop
| neurological issues years later, and died.
|
| The brain was donated and autopsied.
|
| Full study: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/
| fneur.2021.6280...
|
| Are you saying the lead scientist on this paper, from the
| Tulane National Primate Research Center is a scammer? (ht
| tps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulane_National_Primate_Resea
| r...)
|
| Seems like a big accusation.
| DetroitThrow wrote:
| I had recently read a paper by a professor in Stanford
| Psychiatry that made very exaggerated claims that would
| go on to not be replicated to the degree originally made,
| which I had expected as the treatment used was not a
| major improvement on the existing methods and that
| researchers from even prestigious universities might be
| incentivized to not investigate or report the full truth
| if they might benefit from it in some way.
|
| While it's interesting that the treatment was
| "successful" and that symptoms continued, this isn't
| really a strong statement of support for something like
| Chronic Lyme Disease or at least its widespread
| presentation - much more likely a statement of support
| for Lyme Disease bacteria not always being treated by the
| regimen, or potentially even that it's easy for someone
| to get a second infection and have no significant
| immunity.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I think even the article makes a mention that there is
| not scientific consensus on many aspects of Lyme disease.
| It seems it is one of many topics that have studies that
| may contradict other studies, or explore additional
| angles.
| DetroitThrow wrote:
| The article seems to indicate that consensus does not
| support Chronic Lyme Disease, instead preferring Post
| Treatment Lyme Disease as a pathology (which doesn't seem
| unlikely if the disease causes nervous system damage). It
| also mentions reinfection has been recorded. I'm only
| really seeing one data point being posted to counter that
| idea, and that doesn't seem to exclude the reinfection
| scenario.
|
| I guess the hope for promoters of CLD would be that it's
| possible to treat the currently irreversible PTLD
| symptoms using antibiotics, rather than accept something
| akin to a fibromyalgia diagnosis.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Ah, I didn't see that this was strictly a comment about
| chronic Lyme. It seems pretty well settled, but that
| single conflicting case does leave the door open for
| further study, even if only to determine how a fluke
| happened.
| coding123 wrote:
| Yeah did you read his links?
|
| https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fneur.2021.628
| 0...
|
| Pretty damning.
| garyrob wrote:
| I know where you're coming from. I believe it is the
| appropriate attitude in discussing misinformation with, for
| example, covid.
|
| BUT I really did do my own research with respect to Lyme,
| reading deeply into the peer-reviewed literature, and I
| came to the conclusion that the "scientific consensus" was
| formed by people too lazy or misguided to read it
| themselves.
|
| For example, the consensus was that Lyme couldn't persist
| in humans after antibiotic treatment. But it DOES persist
| in other animals including primates. They could easily
| discover that because they could euthanize those other
| animals to see if it was there in their tissues, and it
| was. They couldn't do that with humans. The conclusion is
| OBVIOUSLY not that it can't happen in humans, but rather
| that we haven't proved it could. The "scientific consensus"
| got those outcomes confused, and assumed it couldn't.
|
| But consider this quote from the OP article: "In May, her
| research team published their strongest evidence to date of
| persistent Lyme symptoms. In a unique finding, they
| discovered Lyme bacteria in the tissues of a deceased
| 69-year-old woman who contracted the disease, was treated
| multiple times with antibiotics, and still couldn't clear
| the infection from her body."
|
| I was impressed by related evidence a couple years ago,
| such as an examination of the brains of people who had died
| of Alzheimer's. I don't remember the exact number, but
| something like 25% of those brains contained Lyme
| spirochetes. Note that there is a theory gaining traction
| recently that Alzheimer's is caused by the brain's attempts
| to manage active infections.
|
| There is much, much more to say, and a LOT of research that
| goes in the opposite direction of what you're assuming in
| your post.
|
| An anecdote: researchers tested hundreds of FDA-approved
| drugs in test tubes to see which ones worked best at
| killing Lyme spirochetes. Disulfiram won. My wife, who had
| lost her career as a retinal surgeon and researcher due to
| a chronic illness we thought might be chronic Lyme, took
| disulfiram under the care of her doctor who had treated
| Lyme patients for decades, and who was one of the first to
| try disulfiram in patients.
|
| After the treatment, her illness disappeared. Our older son
| also had the same illness, which led to him taking a year
| off from school because he just couldn't function. He had
| been taking antibiotics for a couple years. At one point we
| stopped the antibiotics, and he felt great for a week,
| worse the next week, and in week 3 he was all the way back
| to being pretty nonfunctional with the symptoms attributed
| to "chronic Lyme". He, too, took disulfiram and was cured.
|
| Note that we had long spent summers on Little Deer Isle,
| Maine, known for its deer and deer ticks.
| Quinner wrote:
| A decade ago Lyme disease landed me in the hospital with
| carditis and neurological issues. I still worry that my
| brain doesn't work as well as it used to, but I don't
| have symptoms severe enough to make me seek out
| additional treatment (yet).
|
| It should be noted that while there is some evidence that
| Disulfiram has effectiveness against Lyme, it's not yet
| well-studied and the incidence of significant side
| effects, particularly neurological side effects, during
| treatment is high enough that I wouldn't risk it. Both
| the risks and benefits haven't been studied enough to
| quantify, though I'm glad it worked well for your family.
|
| Source on high incidence of side effects:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7184924/
| garyrob wrote:
| "It should be noted that while there is some evidence
| that Disulfiram has effectiveness against Lyme, it's not
| yet well-studied and the incidence of significant side
| effects, particularly neurological side effects, during
| treatment is high enough that I wouldn't risk it."
|
| Oh man, don't I know it. My post was about the question
| of whether chronic Lyme actually exists, not whether
| taking disulfiram is a good idea.
|
| Both my wife and son had a VERY difficult time with the
| disulfiram treatment. My son, in particular, ended up in
| the ER one night, basically having a psychotic break.
| That was the day he stopped taking the disulfiram.
|
| BUT it happens that he was almost at the end of the
| recommended treatment duration anyway, and EVERY
| indication is that both he and my wife were completely
| cured by it. This was probably about 2 years ago, and so
| it's very encouraging that there is no evidence of any
| recurrence.
|
| As I mentioned, my wife and son were early in the
| treatment experiments, and they had high doses. The
| doctor who treated them has now treated a good number of
| people and has much more experience with different doses.
| With a lower dose for the same amount of time, cures are
| less reliable. But there are experiments with low doses
| for longer times.
|
| I worry that you may have Lyme spirochetes in your brain
| that may predispose you to Alzheimer's. So it might not
| be a bad idea to look into more treatment even if you can
| deal with your current state.
|
| If you do, I'd recommend talking to my wife and son's
| doctor, https://lymediseaseassociation.org/blogs/lda-
| guest-blogs/ken...
| DetroitThrow wrote:
| >Note that there is a theory gaining traction recently
| that Alzheimer's is caused by the brain's attempts to
| manage active infections.
|
| I think it's always been noted that Alzheimer's risk can
| increase significantly after certain infections. I don't
| think this really takes out the genetic component and
| other environmental components to be contributors,
| though, and I've not heard much on the front of it being
| the primary contributor of Alzheimer's risk.
| computer23 wrote:
| Inter_netuser: That Frontiers paper is about as reliable as
| Big Foot hunters claiming they finally found him. The authors
| Brian Fallon and Monica Embers have been trying to prove
| chronic Lyme beliefs for many years.
|
| They are funded by their antiscience movement:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4489928/
|
| The Frontiers paper is a single case report that admits that
| the woman's Lyme ELISA (and hence total antibodies to Lyme)
| was negative when she started experiencing dementia. Without
| antibodies against Lyme, it would be a mistake to claim that
| she had "chronic Lyme" (which isn't real regardless.) The
| paper is consistent with someone who had lyme disease (a not-
| uncommon illness) and then years later was diagnosed with
| dementia, but you can't say Lyme caused the dementia.
|
| There is a scientific consensus against chronic Lyme based on
| decades of research.
|
| It's disturbing that chronic Lyme has become a dangerous
| social phenomenon based on conspiracy theories, fake
| diagnoses, and fake treatments.
|
| https://www.thecut.com/2019/07/what-happens-when-lyme-
| diseas...
| jacksonkmarley wrote:
| From that study:
|
| > These results however do not clarify whether the Borrelia
| infection had anything to do with her progressive
| neurodegenerative disorder
| inter_netuser wrote:
| Impossible to do this reliably on a single patient with
| multiple conditions and advanced age. One could take a
| guess, but the error bar would be 0.0-1.0
|
| This study set out to prove chronic persistence of the
| pathogen despite standard treatments, which is rather hard
| to dispute.
| jacksonkmarley wrote:
| Being able to detect Borrelia Spirochetes is not
| equivalent to linking them with chronic symptoms.
| nicoburns wrote:
| I think the key thing is that it disproves the idea that
| the bacteria which cause the disease are reliably
| eliminated by antibiotics, which is typically a key point
| that those in the "it's not cause by lyme" camp rely on.
|
| Doesn't prove that it is lyme, but it shifts the balance
| of probablities considerably.
| jacksonkmarley wrote:
| I don't have an opinion on what the "it's not caused by
| lyme" camp rely on, but the wikipedia page complained
| about above actually already references another study
| that found spirochetes in animals after antibiotic
| treatment.
|
| No doubt the language in that wikipedia page is pretty
| triggering if you already believe chronic lyme disease is
| a thing though.
| inter_netuser wrote:
| The human study was literally done because denial of
| chronic lyme persisted despite multiple reliable studies
| in animal models.
|
| It's quite disgusting and begets further questions as to
| why such attitudes towards Lyme exist in the first place.
| darkerside wrote:
| Most CDC / IDSA folks will tell you that a course of
| antibiotics will rid the body of Lyme in all cases. The
| presence of spirochetes here should be enough for them to
| stop using that language. But it likely won't because
| there appears to be a systemic organizational bias
| against Lyme as a chronic condition, and I'm not sure
| why.
| rdedev wrote:
| Kind of reminds me of Alzheimer's disease and the
| pervasive insistence that it's cause by misfokded
| protiens even though so many treatments following that
| assumption failed to cure it. Sometimes an idea is just
| hard to introduce or root out in academia
| [deleted]
| megous wrote:
| Presence 4 years or so later. So, maybe the patient was
| infected again some time after initial treatment?
| darkerside wrote:
| Occam's Razor applies.
|
| You're not wrong, but they continue to lean on the
| "evidence doesn't support" angle. At some point that
| looks like bias.
| inter_netuser wrote:
| The study is a follow-up study on primates that confirmed
| the exact same thing, only to be dismissed "because not
| in humans duuuuh"
|
| Now we have human brain autopsies. Plenty of denial right
| in this thread.
|
| And then people wonder why people don't trust physicians
| and do not vaccinate.
| kortex wrote:
| The recalcitrance of the broader medical research community to
| acknowledge that spirochetes can persist after antibiotics and
| continue to wreak havoc, is truly astounding. You'd think after
| all the "whoops, my bad" moments in history - handwashing,
| thalidomide, GRID/AIDS, to name a few, they would learn to be a
| bit more conservative in their stance, e.g. "we have not found
| _direct_ evidence of chronic Lyme, but it has a plausible
| mechanism and widespread reports. "
|
| I've already seen the needle shift from "Lyme is impossible
| after antibiotics" to "well I guess some cases escape first
| round of treatment."
| zz865 wrote:
| Lyme is just one of the horrible diseases ticks carry. Would be
| nice to cull most of the deer in the North East. A few decades
| ago they were rare, now they're everywhere.
| pcmaffey wrote:
| Or reintroduce wolves.
| jankotek wrote:
| Better to eradicate ticks.
| somehnacct3757 wrote:
| The deer themselves are a problem in the northeast. They are
| greatly overpopulated and eat the native understory,
| preventing the next generation of trees from growing past
| adolescence. As the existing trees slowly die, there will be
| none younger to replace them.
|
| This also clears out the competition to the benefit of non-
| native plants, which the deer don't eat. Some of these plants
| are invasive, such as japanese barberry, and render large
| areas untraversable. Not to mention the bramble is an
| excellent home for rodents, another major tick carrier.
|
| If you want to reduce ticks, deer are a critical element of
| their lifecycle.
| gilbetron wrote:
| Don't forget to give part of the blame for the forest woes
| on worms:
| https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/the_dirt_about_earthworms
| jf22 wrote:
| I'm sure deer populations have been higher in the past and
| the forests survived.
| giantg2 wrote:
| There have been times of higher deer population. The
| population was much higher in PA when my dad was a kid.
| It currently sits around 30 deer per square mile, which 3
| times higher than pre colonial times.
| zz865 wrote:
| There used to be Wolves and Mountain lions to keep the
| deer under control.
| echelon wrote:
| There's nothing unethical with culling an overpopulated
| species. We do it to deer, wolves, etc. all the time via
| hunting permits.
|
| As long as wild biology subsists on killing and eating,
| there's no problem with humans doing the same in order to
| restore balance.
|
| It also helps to reintroduce natural predators when
| possible. But in absence of that strategy, humans can do
| the job too.
| somehnacct3757 wrote:
| In my area there are over 120 deer per square mile
| currently. This number was historically 10, when
| predators existed. Studies have shown that around 30 deer
| per square mile is when biodiversity starts to suffer.
|
| I live in the forest and manage my lot with guidance from
| foresters and nearby park rangers. It may take a hundred
| years for these current trees to die, but there's nothing
| to replace them. You can walk the understory and see
| knee-high trees that can't grow further because the deer
| prune their leaves.
| bjoli wrote:
| 120 deer per square mile?!
|
| In thought the moose problem in Sweden was big. That is
| just ridiculous. We have a moose population that is waaay
| higher than ever before because we killed most large
| predators, and the people responsible for keeping the
| population down (hunters) want a much larger population
| than is environmentally defensible.
| giantg2 wrote:
| The mice are the main component to the lyme lifecycle.
| There is a researcher working to give mice immunity using
| crispr.
|
| Generally, the deer are only overpopulating (at least to
| the extent you describe) in areas that aren't hunted, which
| also tend to be highly populated. It seems many people
| enjoy seeing the deer in their backyards and don't want
| their almost-pets to be killed, especially if it means it
| might have to be done on their land. How do you propose
| dealing with that opposition?
| gkilmain wrote:
| Definitely. I bought tick tubes which target the mice.
| I've had one on me since putting them out in late April.
| I think they're working but need more time to test.
| technothrasher wrote:
| > Generally, the deer are only overpopulating (at least
| to the extent you describe) in areas that aren't hunted
|
| Central Massachusetts has a very active deer hunting
| community. I never have any trouble filling my freezer
| with free venison every fall. But the deer population is
| still _four times_ the sustainable level as set by the
| state Wildlife dept and local conservation groups.
|
| Hunting isn't necessarily enough to control the
| population.
| giantg2 wrote:
| It depends on a number of factors. Access is a huge one
| where I'm at. Public lands can be basically hunted out
| while the deer have moved onto private lands where nobody
| hunts and created huge herds (30+).
|
| If your area doesn't have the access issue, then I would
| guess it could be an issue with the number of hunters -
| if there aren't enough, then they can't harvest the
| number required to bring down the population (or the
| limits make it difficult - seems like that's the case the
| way they handle doe permits). Many states have a program
| that allows hunters to donate their deer to a food bank
| through a participating butcher. This can make a big
| impact in areas that allow more harvests (MD allows 10
| doe per year/season without any special permits).
| somehnacct3757 wrote:
| Show them a close-up of a deer's face in an ad campaign,
| lol. They're covered in ticks, it's like a Ren & Stimpy
| zoom shot.
|
| You could also get more ppl into gardening. Gardeners end
| up hating deer after their gardens get raided once or
| twice.
| quesera wrote:
| Both small mammal and large mammal hosts are required in
| the deer tick lifecycle.
|
| White-footed mice are the most common host for the small
| mammal portion (but there are many options), and deer are
| the most common host for the large mammal portion.
|
| Deer are easier to count and control than
| mice/voles/moles/chipmunks/etc.
|
| So controlling deer populations is more likely to be
| successful in breaking the deer tick lifecycle.
|
| So sayeth a publication from researchers at the
| University of Connecticut, at least.
|
| I'm sympathetic with the almost-pet Bambi-loving crowd.
| But Lyme is real and not at all cuddly. Bring back the
| wolves!
| giantg2 wrote:
| Coyotes have been introduced in the east in the past.
| They generally don't kill healthy adult deer (maybe), but
| they do kill a decent number of fawns. They aren't enough
| to fully control the population, especially in the
| suburbs.
|
| The advantage of going after the mice is that they can
| use crispr to give them immunity. It could be used on
| deer, but would probably have more push back. Tick tubes
| have already been shown to be effective at the small
| mammal level.
|
| It will likely require a combination to control.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Eastern red fox populations need to be higher. They're
| amazing mouse hunters.
| exhilaration wrote:
| Ticks are on all small mammals - field mice [1], rabbits, etc.
| Culling the deer won't be enough.
|
| [1] Check out these tick tubes:
| https://blogs.cornell.edu/nysipm/2019/06/28/dont-make-your-o...
| patall wrote:
| Ticks and Lyme are also transmitted by birds (i.e https://www
| .sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/01/210127093213.h...).
| Especially migrating birds are a big issue as more and more
| 'tropic' ticks end up north.
| magpi3 wrote:
| There are deer feeders that kill ticks. This solution seems
| more humane then trying to kill most of the deer.
| rory wrote:
| _Most_ may be too far, but I also see a bunch of postings
| that a cull is needed to slow the spread of CWD.
| driverdan wrote:
| Mice are the bigger problem, not deer.
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