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Comment by jakjak123 | Hacker News Reader

Ticks are incredibly common. People in my area of the country get hundreds of ticks during their life. It's also fairly rare they carry Lyme disease and gets you infected. You definitively should not be given antibiotics without a clear reason.

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I'm guessing that having a tick for longer than 24 to 48 hours was a clear enough reason. I assume people who get hundreds of ticks will be checking more thoroughly and remove them within two days.

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.

We check for ticks every day you have been in the garden or just outside in the woods. Less than 2% of ticks carry Lyme disease, and there is even less chance you actually get a infection, and that the infection becomes a permanent infection. As far as I know, Lyme disease is not that dangerous, but the bacteria can enter stasis and "hide" in different parts of your body, until it suddenly becomes active again, then really blossom if you are weakened for other reasons. The point is just that there is a less than 2% chance of even getting a tick that is a carrier, even less chance you get sick, even less chance it ends up in the dangerous stasis state. One usually does not treat for Lyme, until enough of the symptoms have started showing.

In a few (large) areas of the US, Lyme is endemic and most deer ticks are carriers.

I've tested random samples from a few forests in the Northeast, and >75% came back positive.

What would the "clear reason" be?

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