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Comment by zzzeek | Hacker News Reader

and the rabbits and chipmunks and mice and squirrels, as well as that you have to kill basically all deer to the point of about 8 deer per square mile, since one deer can carry 2000-3000 new ticks. which is basically impossible on mainland because new deer just wander over.

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I'm thinking reverse gene drive? Keep the animals and destroy the pests. Also let's do that for screw worms.

We DID, for screwworms.

The fucking republicans got rid of it, calling it "watching flies have sex".

Now, republicans and DOGE fucked around. Now, Texas and southern states are going to find out.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/doge-slashed-usda-staffing...

I wasn't making a scientific statement about whether depopulating the deer will help; the governor of Massachusetts already did. I'm saying that it's pathetic to blame it all on deer and then not eliminate the pointlessly onerous burden on culling their population.

But since you're being needlessly snarky about it (it's not productive to suggest killing "the rabbits and chipmunks and mice and squirrels"), here:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25118409/

>After hunts were initiated, number and frequency of deer observations in the community were greatly reduced as were resident-reported cases of Lyme disease. Number of resident-reported cases of Lyme disease per 100 households was strongly correlated to deer density in the community. Reducing deer density to 5.1 deer per square kilometer resulted in a 76% reduction in tick abundance, 70% reduction in the entomological risk index, and 80% reduction in resident-reported cases of Lyme disease in the community from before to after a hunt was initiated.

As I said - on mainland. That study was done on a peninsula community surrounded by water, except on the north side, which was mostly a nature preserve where a 6 foot high fence on that side prevented new deer from entering.

So yes "kill all the deer" (like nearly ALL deer) works if you're in a small community that is 95% sealed off.

Realistically, "we have no solution to tick borne disease except for hiring tens of thousands of full time hunters continuously shooting animals in residential areas to keep the deer population on the brink of extinction" is not a sufficient solution for me.

And I live in a town where we have lots of those guys. It's fine. But scaling them up to the point that we don't need to spray for ticks anymore, you'd have them falling out of trees in playgrounds.

In many places, you need to add lizards to that list.

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