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The quantity of ticks in the eastern US is insane. I would be in favor of a serious look at eradicating them.

It isn’t too bad in the Mountain West comparatively in my experience, though you have some bad areas in California. I am an outdoorsy person. While I live in the western US my experiences in the woods of the eastern US still stick in my mind. In some areas it was literally crawling with ticks.

I currently live in Seattle. The western side of the Cascade Mountains are essentially devoid of ticks and no one knows why, it is a bit of a scientific mystery. Years of tromping through the bush and I’ve never seen one here, which is great. It does make me wonder if there is something in the ecosystem here that could be adapted to mitigate tick populations elsewhere.

Come down to Ojai valley. They'll be crawling all over you in no time. I grew up in the east. Most of the ticks we had at least couldn't even carry Lyme or Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. California is wild.

Did you get tested or did you diagnose yourself?

> current generations never touch grass and the outbreak never appears as bad as it actually is.

I must say, I played in tall grass a lot as a child, catching insects and whatnot. Now I won't go anywhere near them without pretty serious protection, and I spend a great deal of time outdoors

When I was young, tall grass was fine. But kids these days know to beware of Pokemons in the tall grass.

treat your clothing with permethrin

Can't easily buy it in Europe. Some dog sprays have it, and stuff against wood bugs.

At least in Germany you can get Nobite sprays in drug stores. This (German) security sheet[1] lists 2% Permethrin as an ingredient.

[1] https://nobite.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Nobite_Kleidun...

Is Lyme disease much of a problem in Europe though?

Yes, a big one actually. In Austria, it’s really really bad. I’ve had it twice (rash and all) 20y ago already.

At a party, I heard one person mention that a doctor had told him that he had BOTH north american lyme disease AND european lyme disease.

Lucky him.

He was at the doctor's office because of severe symptoms that he suspected were due to lyme disease since he had received several tick bites years ago.

what were your symptoms?

First year:

Very covid-like symptoms, to the point where I initially did a quick home covid test (or multiple tests if I remember) that was negative. Very distinct soreness around the crease of the hip/leg joint, probably a lymph gland.

Second year: exact same symptoms but less intense, still started antibiotics immediately

third: again same but less intense, I ignored it until general full-body joint pain occurred then immediately went on antibiotics, after a few months of that it started to clear up.

Glad that your lyme was temporary

Lyme disease and bacteria are always temporary. The long term disease/syndrome many people attribute to it is something else similar to long COVID and still debated.

This is the one area where the CDC actually does have accurate advice, Lyme is excellent at hiding itself from your immune system and tends to burrow into joint tissue where antibiotics have difficulty reaching. DON'T assume the disease is temporary, as the bacteria is well-known to cause lasting nerve damage even after it dies off completely. I have more than one friend who wasn't as lucky as me and still suffers with symptoms to this day.

Having done the research myself, it seems to be biofilms that the bacteria create leading to a "dormant" yet still metabolically active state that releases inflammatory byproducts throughout the body.

The recommended course of action seems to be disulfiram to bust those biofilms + antibiotics to finally kill it all off.

In my understanding (from some years back when I was researching this myself), Lyme takes multiple forms, and in some phase in their life cycle are able to hide inside red blood cells. Antibiotics work only for some of the forms.

Lyme Disease has existed for a very long time, it is always treatable by antibiotics and can be tested by tests. Antibiotics work.

Some researchers think that the difficulty in healing Lyme disease is related to the fact that Lyme changes form and antibiotics only target some of the forms. In some countries, doctors are forbidden to make long-term prescription for antibiotics based on the idea that chronic Lyme does not exist.

> ...I suppose the sad irony here is that lyme is not getting attention because well... current generations never touch grass and the outbreak never appears as bad as it actually is.

The Morgellons outbreak is also much worse than it appears, or so I've heard.

> -Never had a tick attached more than 24 hours

> -When a tick was attached around 24 hours,

These comments directly contradict the other. Either you've never had a tick for 24 hours which means the second comment isn't true, or your first comment is not true.

"Around 24 hours" means approximately 1 day. "More than 24 hours" means more than approximately 1 day. Please do not comment further unless you actually have something useful to add.

Yeah nah. I agree with the comment you replied to.

The error bars on around 24 hours and more than 24 hours over lap at least a bit.

If I had a tick for 23 hours and the guidelines say ‘more than 24’ I’d be treating it the same as ‘more than 24’ for practical purposes.

There is at least some natural variation in the host and the pathogen for there to be at least some people for who the guidelines aren’t strict enough.

Public health policy is a balance of factors, one of which is trying to not overwhelm services with trivial / non maladies.

The actual error bar of "typical time-to-infection", as per CDC guideline is 36 hours minimum. 24 is my generous amount of error factor in the most optimistic (or worst, if you're a human and not a tick) direction.

So in other words, this was my experience, and it was at least 50% worse in timescale than the cdc predicted