"Perfectly good" is an overstatement. Efficacy wasn't that great (80% or so) and there was some evidence of side effects. Overall, the vaccine should almost certainly have not been taken off the market but it's not a near-perfect vaccine vs. FUD story either.

See, for example: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2870557/

You may not need a higher efficacy, herd immunity does not require 100%.

Chart of herd immunity thresholds for some diseases:

https://www-tc.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/assets/img/herd-immunity/im...

oh_sigh is correct, humans are a dead end host for lyme. It's primarily maintained in a mouse reservoir - the larval and nymph ticks feed on infected mice, and then the nymph and adult ticks can expose humans and deer. Deer are not really a big reservoir either, since mostly adult ticks feed on them, but they do move ticks around.

Edit: you can actually try to vaccinate the reservoir, however: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24523510

Lyme disease isn't passed from human to human so herd immunity is irrelevant.

My mistake, I thought it was a vaccine for the deer.

As I understand it the vector is mice, not deer. There's a correlation between mouse populations where the juveniles feed and Lyme disease outbreaks 2 years later when the adults latch onto humans.

lyme disease can be passed human to human as a std or the womb from mother to child

Lyme disease is NOT sexually transmitted. https://www.cdc.gov/lyme/faq/index.html

(citation needed)

> Overall, the vaccine should almost certainly have not been taken off the market

It's no longer patented so nothing is stopping you from selling it if you think there's a market.

Read "should not" as it's unfortunate that potential legal issues around Lymerix were such that a vaccine was a losing business proposition. In general, human vaccines aren't a great opportunity for pharma companies--to the point where they're protected against liability for common vaccines.

it was recalled because it was causing damages. the article is wrong. they found that body tissues has similar protein structures as the target for the vaccine, and left some people in wheel chairs. there are some developments for an improved vaccine but not out yet.