There is actually quite a lot of lyme disease in Northern California. http://ipm.ucanr.edu/PMG/PESTNOTES/pn7485.html

That’s why we need research. We don’t know if they have a common cause or just a common mechanism of action. They very well could be the same disease; Lyme Disease is not well understood and has been implicated in all sorts of neurological diseases such as Multiple Sclerosis and Alzheimer’s.

But the link isn’t quite obvious enough and the potential treatments, which rules out government money; and aren’t considered to be profitable, which rules out commercial money. Good for Gates stepping in here

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4019728/

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn28514-conquistador-br...

In short, they stopped manufacture because the demand was not high enough to defend the lawsuits - even though science was on the side of the vaccine (though this is partially hindsight, it takes years to do good science much less time to file a lawsuit based on a correlation)

There is a new vaccine entering trials now. I hope it works, but only time will tell. (for all I know it may have failed trials - success will take more time, but failure can be quick and I wouldn't always find out)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirochaete

They aren't just limited to the Eastern US.