With the prevalence of ticks like I’ve never seen before, I started researching Lyme disease. This was never a concern when I was a kid; we played in the woods and tall grass all day without an issue. No one knew what a tick was.

I’m suspicious that disease carrying ticks have risen to the level they are at seemingly out of nowhere, but I have no proof other than my own speculation.

I did, however, discover some interesting parallels in my research about the disease. There was a vaccine that was released sometime in the late ‘90s and pulled from the market in 2002. It was called LYMERix. They site insufficient consumer demand as the reason for discontinuation. Interestingly, news articles from the time read almost identically to todays stories about antivaxxers spreading disinformation and that LYMERix was safe and effective. The so called disinformation spreaders were blamed for the lack of demand, when in reality people were having bad reactions to it just like today.

Here’s the kicker…the CDC’s website says Pfizer and another company are currently developing a new vaccine. Interesting when you reference that with the steep rise in disease carrying ticks over the last 5 - 10 years.

What is Lyme disease? Where did all the ticks come from? How do you treat Lyme disease? Antibiotics? Why is a vaccine needed for a treatable condition? Why do some people suffer long term, while others are cured? Why do the blood tests for Lyme disease often yield both false positive and negative results? Why are most doctors very poor at diagnosing and treating this disease?

I’d love to hear everyone’s collective knowledge on this.