I’m not optimistic this will be all that helpful. Just because the tick you found is negative, that tells you nothing about those you did not find. Just because a tick is positive, that does not mean that it has infected whoever it was attached to.
My understanding is that the ticks only transmit disease after they have been attached long enough to become engorged. None of the ticks shown were engorged.
Another is Alpha Gal. It is a molecule carried in tick saliva that can cause serious allergies to red meat and even dairy. Because the molecule is in the saliva, it can be delivered immediately.
I’ve hear stats as long as 24 hours and as short as 30 seconds. One nurse told me that removing ticks by grasping and pulling means they transmit immediately, because you squeeze their contents through their mouths. I no longer believe any of the stats; seems like it could be at any time.
Whenever someone recommends removal using tweezers, I wonder if the person offering this advice has ever removed a well attached tick. I’ve found tools like a Tick Tornado work better, but are still problematic with smaller ticks.
Just breaking out the tweezers and yanking away was most emphatically not recommended. It can leave the mouth parts behind, if nothing else.
Makes me wonder of what would happen when you'd use the tips of two blank wires connected to a 1.5V battery?
ZAP!
Could be made into a small USB-gadget, to have it always available? Zaptastick!
It's already a thing*, in many different variations. Some use piezo-electrics, advertised as 'battery free'. And countless other stuff, many with some variation of Zap(p) in their names.
*Sort of, didn't see small 'passive' ones powered by USB.
Edit: Thinking about it, one could abuse and modify one of the countless e-vapes for it? Small enough in most cases, and self-powered.
30+ years ago we would use ether to remove them, and I enjoyed burning them afterwards, it was so satisfying...
And tiny ones are easy to remove with finger nails and some spit. But it requires some skill, do not stress out the ticks while they are attached and be careful to not partially remove it.
(Just had to remove 3 ticks on me I failed to spot after a late night walk yesterday, bigger and medium sized ones with tool, the small one with fingernail)
edit: and found a 4th one, but a tiny one(nymphe), they don't carry lyme disease as only ticks who have previously bitten a infected animal before will have it
Having an easy to use method which doesn't need special tools also helps by being able to immediately remove them.
There's the common advice to wear long pants & tuck them into socks. But at times I've found the exact opposite: short pants are fine.
Why: ticks can be hard to find on clothing. So you get home, inspect legs etc, and (later) a tick crawls from pants onto your leg & you may not notice.
Bare legs otoh make it trivial to check for ticks regularly during a walk, and/or when you feel something crawling up your leg. Since they're not yet attached then, a flick of your finger & they're off.
Some say "neurotoxin". Others say "neurotoxin till dried".
Frankly, I'll keep it away in any form. I dont want to harm my cats. Even if it means that I'm a human pincushion to mosquitoes and ticks.
They make flea collars for cats with permethrin (I found out just now) so it can’t be that toxic. If you’re really worried just get a pair of hiking pants and boots and keep them in a catproof tote.
If someone doesn’t notice a tick then they aren’t going to be considering prophylactic treatment anyway. It’s for the cases where ticks are discovered.
Next to that, in The Netherlands we have a site to report tick bites and if they had lyme disease or not. It’s good to know if you should be extra vigilant after a bite from a certain area. I think the self-test could be very useful for such sites.
Is there a similar site to report mosquito bites? They also carry many debilitation or fatal diseases.
I live in prime tick country. During peak season (March through June and again September through November) I can get 3 or 4 tick bites a day. I don't always get them all because they're completely painless while they're embedded (although I react strongly after they've been removed) and I've been diagnosed with and treated for Lyme disease twice after developing all the classic symptoms. I am not alone in my area. If there was a site where you report tick bites here it would need to be pretty robust to handle the load and it would serve no purpose.
The local authorities have acknowledged the rampant outbreak of Lyme in the region. You do not need to provide the tick to authorities for identification. All you need to do is go to any pharmacy and tell them you've been bitten by a tick and they'll write you a prescription for Doxycycline on the spot.
From what I understand, you're spot on with your last note. Larval stage can be extremely hard to see even when fully engorged. Adult-stage ticks (at least Deer Ticks) are the size of a large grain of cooked brown rice. I've seen fully engorged nymph-stage that rival the size of a grape...
One other I found crawling up my white tshirt. Good reminder to wear light colored clothes when you’re out where ticks are.
the US gets a persistent amount of emergency room visits for this sort of treatment (tens of thousands annually), and with all the news about increased tick and lyme exposure a larger number of people treat it preemptively, especially with children
I only would consider antibiotics if the red ring appears. In general I suppose I already have resistance .. or the disease slumbering in my body.
I really don't believe that the vague long term symptoms a lot of people are describing in this thread are from ticks, especially people who don't spend much time outside in lyme endemic regions. Lyme has become a favorite label for quacks to describe the fatigue/pain syndrome that is sometimes called fibromyalgia. We don't really know what causes it (and it's probably not ticks), and taking high dose doxycycline for months is not the answer, other than maybe as a placebo.
Otherwise just enjoy your life.
This understanding will age like milk.