Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/06/24/ptlds.html
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My neighborhood is full of deer. And because all the houses are within the hunting safety zone (150 feet around each house), no one hunts them.
So they prosper. And poop on my backyard. And eat my apples (actually better them than yellow jackets). And drop their ticks. I always shower after cutting grass or being in the yard. Forewarned is forearmed.
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Thank anti-vaxers for the lack of a human Lyme vaccine.
My dog is vaccinated for Lyme but the human Lyme vaccine was pulled off the market because of anti-vax scaremongering.
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I’ve become very pro deer hunting ever since listening to https://www.alieward.com/ologies/diseaseecology
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Lyme is no joke. I got it ~5 years ago and felt like garbage for a few weeks. I finally went to the doctor with a pulse of 40 bpm, then had to go to the hospital where my pulse had dropped to 20bpm a few hours later, then finally went into full-blown cardiac arrest followed by a week in the hospital with a pacemaker taped to my neck. I feel fine now, but that Wu Tang should write an entire album about not fucking with tick-borne illnesses.
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Lyme is a serious illness, but the mainstream medical community has never taken it as seriously as it should. My sister-in-law has Lyme, and it affects not only her but her whole family due to the severity and persistence of symptoms. I learned a ton about it from this documentary: https://underourskin.com/
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Hell yes to all of this! My wife got Lyme disease back when we lived in Mass (12 people up and down our block all got it the same year). She’s dealt with chronic Lyme for years, and the doctors here in Texas act like it doesn’t exist. In fact, we have come to discover that most of the medical community doesn’t believe in any form of chronic Lyme disease. Arthritis, swollen joints, and fatigue are big symptoms. Powerful anti inflammatories are necessary. We can also look forward to more of these insect borne illnesses as climate change makes things warmer and wetter.
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Sorry to hear she’s dealing with that. The infectious disease doc I dealt with said that chronic Lyme isn’t a thing and that it’s just aches and pains of getting older. I’ve been pretty lucky with it so far, but I don’t discount the suffering of others.
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It’s not Lyme disease, exactly, but the meat allergy issue has become fairly well understood here in Australia. Obviously not limited to one tick type.
Here we get it from the delightfully, and accurately, named Paralysis Tick.
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As someone who has struggled personally with chronic lyme your response is hillarious. The same CDC that has refused to acknowledge chronic lyme even exists, has historically grossly under reported the cases of lyme disease, and has made it absurdly complicated to even get a reportable diagnosis is the same CDC we should completely trust when it comes to vaccines? Personally I prefer my science to come from, well science - not government institutions. The CDC has a history of over simplifying complex chronic health conditions especially Lyme disease.
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https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/fake-diagnoses-not-fake-diseases/
This is a pretty balanced approach to this (very complex) issue. As I fall entirely into the “science based community” when it comes to medicine, I appreciate Dr. Gorski’s “fake diagnosis, but not fake disease” nomenclature. I will also give him props for being able to evolve his views after interaction with patients as well as science. I wish more in the alt med community were as open to input.
Fully expecting outrage from some, but there you have it.
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Police-grade tasers shoot up to 30 feet. Is there such thing as taser and broadsword hunting?
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When my dog couldn’t walk last year I took him to the vet and found out he had contracted Lyme, the research pointed towards treating with antibiotics followed by homeopathic Ledum Palustre, it has pretty good reviews, but of course nothing scientific. Something about treating with just antibiotics made me uneasy due to the possibility of chronic Lyme.
I have a friend though who has chronic Lyme and the only thing she found to help her walk is the ‘Miracle Mineral Supplement’, chlorine dioxide. It’s made by a preacher who claims to be from the andromeda galaxy, so you know it’s good stuff. No amount of reason will get that woman to stop drinking bleach.
Lyme is an odd disease, most people get over it with antibiotics, if you don’t you might find yourself a new found believer in alternative medicine and conspiracy theories. Old Lyme, Connecticut, where the first cases happened in 1975 is 10 miles from Plum Island, a federal laboratory that calls it’s self “the premier defense against accidental or intentional introduction of transboundary animal diseases". So people have assumed Lyme is a escaped biological weapon.
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My pet theory, and that is what it is, is that the spirochete infection of Lyme is pretty amenable to treatment with antibiotics. Problem is, this is a mean SOB of a germ, and killing it does nothing to undo the damage done by the infection. It like to go after joints and nerves, including brains. This leaves many with sequellae that are not amenable to treatment with antibiotics, nor much of anything else. It really truly sucks. A vaccine is probably our best bet, but as has been noted, that is a long way off despite a fairly well established and proven effective veterinary vaccine.
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A tick bite, all by itself, can paralyze and kill small animals through substances in the tick “saliva”. And THEN lyme can be added on.
Ticks are nasty. Don’t get me started on “cute” rats people like to keep
It’s all rather relative too, though, right? We humans are an extremely dangerous parasite, so maybe we ought to just give in to some of nature’s over-corrections?
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There are some topics that look dicey to get involved in, especially if you have no horse in the race. Just wanted to point out the Wikipedia article on chronic Lyme disease, which pretty much agrees with what @docosc posted earlier.
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FWIW, over the years I’ve spoken with a lot of vets on the subject and every single year I would have to explain over again that yes, my dog really does go regularly into woods filled with deer and that we know of at least one confirmed (human) case of Lyme disease from the immediate area, because apparently the canine version of the vaccine still has enough side effects that they don’t give it out without verifying that the danger is worth the potential risk.
But yeah, wouldn’t it be great if they could perfect the vaccine, to help both pets and humans?
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Tick paralysis is a very real, though rare, thing in humans. Yeah, they are nasty, vile little creatures for whom I have no affection whatsoever.
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There was at one point a company (I think based in Maryland), that climbed trees on your property and used bows only fired straight down to control deer. So quieter, and less likely to hit people.
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