I agree antibiotics shouldn't be prescribed without a clear reason. People are being prescribed antibiotics all over for things like the common cold and for some insane reason we're still putting antibiotics in farm animal feed.
But it seems unethical to then take a gamble on whether someone contracted Lyme disease or not just to give the antibiotics we save from that gamble to someone with a runny nose. If we want to save antibiotics then we should test the removed tick for Lyme disease, not wait for symptoms to appear.
I've tested random samples from a few forests in the Northeast, and >75% came back positive.
There's a lot of advice in the Internet why these must be removed in a special way, with a special compound, or whatever. This advice has no scientific standing. Just remove it, with your nails or a pair of tweezers, and really make sure you remove all of it.
In an area where tick borne diseases exist, be on the lookout for symptoms. Do not try to self medicate or take prophylactic antibiotics unless specifically requested by a physician or you get a rash a few days after. After all, not many ticks carry them. You are likely to be absolutely fine. Living in an area where Lyme disease is common, I've had it a few times and it is treatable with antibiotics.
There are however other diseases that aren't as easy to treat. Encephalitis for example. If you think Lyme can be nasty, that one is downright bad. Take the vaccine where it exists.
It was requested by my physician, I did not request them nor did I insist on being prescribed anything.
> You are likely to be absolutely fine. Living in an area where Lyme disease is common, I've had it a few times and it is treatable with antibiotics.
It is still a gamble on whether you will have clear enough symptoms in the short term to prompt an antibiotic treatment. Unfortunately unless you get the bullseye rash it's often not that clear that symptoms that appear much later are related to the tick bite.