Re:Give Me a Secret Garden
by spc476 on Tuesday June 04, 2019 @07:10PM
(#20100111)
As a kid of seven or eight, I remember roaming out in the forest (I lived in the mountains of western North Carolina) only to come home and find the occasional tick on my head. These days, I'd be scared to death of contracting Lyme Disease, but I have to wonder if that's just media scare mongering.
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Re:Give Me a Secret Garden
by ImprovedSilence on Tuesday June 04, 2019 @09:08PM
(#20100674)
Nope, Lyme is real and can really mess people up. I wonder if we (and the doctors) are just getting better at diagnosing/more aware of it. I'd say I've known quite a few people that have gotten lyme, some with worse outcomes than others, but that might be selection bias cuz I know lots of "outdoorsy" people, and I'm getting older. The other part is, have we gotten rid of lots of natural predators of ticks?
The tick load on deer in the Upper Midwest of the US has gone up, and the number of deer is up too compared to 40 years ago. Winter ticks are actually killing moose in both the Upper Midwest and New England, and different species of ticks are being found in the Upper Midwest than used to be found (like Lone Star tick).