I'm sitting in my house folding laundry. CLEAN clothes. When out of the pile comes a tick that starts crawling up my leg. I grab it and try and smash it in a tissue. This thing is like a tank, it won't crush no matter what I do. Had to take it outside, and then burn my house down.
this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2025
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Nature bats last.
Do ticks in America not carry encephalitis (like they do in central/eastern Europe)?Because that's way more dangerous than Lyme disease. I find it weird that it isn't mentioned at all, nor the vaccination against it.
There are several diseases commonly carried by ticks, depending on region. However these days you probably need to look more locally - many state have programs to monitor and try to react:
At least where I live, encephalitis is more of a problem with mosquitoes
Currently, ticks do not carry encephalitis in the US.
I would go to the CDC to check but that’s been deleted. We’ve solved it by removing the webpage
https://www.cdc.gov/tick-borne-encephalitis/index.html
I’m kidding, but it certainly seems to be a thing that people should be aware of.
That being said I think the scary thing about Lyme disease is the symptoms aren’t crazy strong at the beginning, and easy to misattribute if you miss the tick. But if you don’t treat it early it can really fuck you up.
I got bit by a tick years ago when I was 16, right above my belt buckle. Had a generalized rash, and my doctor said it was because of an allergic reaction to my belt buckle and prescribed me steroid cream. Basically had to demand a Lyme test just in case and tested positive.
Dang, what a shitty doctor.
Although I think my perspective is a bit skewed, having grown up in a tick hotspot here in Germany. Everyone is aware of ticks here, pretty sure it's taught in elementary school. And the encephalitis vaccine is pretty much standard, too.
Dang, what a shitty doctor.
I mean... Medicine is super hard. You have to remember, when it comes to biology, we're still figuring it how everything works and there's way less that we actually understand than what we don't understand.
I try to think of it like this, doctors aren't like engineers, because engineers actually have all the specs for the materials or systems they're working with. They can run the numbers and tell you what will happen when the system is altered in x way. Doctors are more like hackers, they have to reverse engineer a complex system that they never got a spec sheet or user manual for. They can't read much of the internal diagnostics and the hardware itself wasn't built with any sensible order or design philosophy. Frankly, it's a terrible system to have to support and maintain and they don't really have the tools or information to do it.
All that said, doctors do an impressive job. And seriously though, this hardware suuuucks...
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Those ticks carry a load of shit. Like one infection that makes you allergic to eating meat.
Oh that's great. Fantastic. Can someone please feel the need to bring one of these into the country for observation or whatever people bring ticks for?
That's one thing this country needs desperately right now... Some big problem or some sort. We've apparently ran out of problems and are actively looking for them as we speak.
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Ticks are one species that I hope go extinct. So gross.
Incorrect. There are MANY species of tick.
My 75 year old dad got a tick bite and ignored it for three days of fever over 101, no appetite, and severely weak before finally getting antibiotics.
He doesn't believe in global warming.
Doesn't believe in internal warming either
I'm up to 9 so far this year
Keep in mind that even after checking yourself after being in the out doors they may still be on your clothes or in your hair. Check yourself again the next day. It takes them awhile to burrow in
Also, if you have pets that go outside, such as a dog you take for walks, you need to check them even if they are on flea and tick prevention. Ticks are more than glad to hitchhike indoors on pets and then later decide to rehome themselves onto a human.
Also highly recommend spraying your dogs thoroughly with Permethrin in addition to whatever else they're on. Permethrin is an insecticide and when ticks come into contact with it they immediately want to get away from it and will hop off as quickly as they can. My dog and I go hiking a lot and I almost never see ticks on him anymore. This applies even if you only walk your dog on paved paths - the ticks sit on the tips of leaves and grass blades waiting for something to come near.
Note: dogs only! Permethrin is toxic to cats.
I would add that it's probably best to bathe your dog as soon as you get home to avoid getting permethrin all over your house and absorbing it through your skin.
You definitely do not need to bathe them and it wouldn't matter if you did. Permethrin is meant to be a long term treatment (up to 6 weeks) so you spray it on your dog and let it dry days before your hike. Once dry permethrin is safe for humans and even cats. In fact treating your own clothing with permethrin (NOT while wearing them) is a safe and effective way to keep mosquitoes and ticks off you as well. Like dogs, permethrin treated clothes are effective for about 6 weeks (or 6 washes).
Oh! I was under the impression that getting it on bare skin was toxic.
When it's wet you should avoid getting it on bare skin, but once it's dried it's inert and you're completely fine. The instructions say when you spray your dog or your clothes you should use gloves, but it dries pretty quickly. Usually about an hour for my dog (he's double coated so it just takes a while for the undercoat to dry), but with most of my clothing I've sprayed it's usually 30-60 minutes depending on the fabric.
With all that said, permethrin has long been approved for and used in lice shampoos, so it's fine even against the skin, it's just that it doesn't work once it's dry on the skin. All studies on permethrin show it to be entirely safe at the concentrations we use it at. It has to bind to fibers, but on skin it will break down quickly and be ineffective. It bonds to fibers really well though and is why it's a longer term solution lasting weeks versus spraying harsh smelling deet that wears off in hours. For ticks it's really the best solution.
Wow that's really informative, thank you! I appreciate you taking the time.
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Too many Ticks? You need more Tocks, then.
Tick tock, tuck your pants into your sock.
I would make a "The Tick" joke but this is serious
I would make one and blame OP for their terrible capitalization
That's New York Times style. Headline Has Every Major Word Capitalized. Subheading looks normal.
Well Then I Guess They Want People to Make Jokes About The Tick
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Don't try to remove them with spoons?
They make spoons specifically for removing ticks.
These work well even on tiny ticks. I got some when I was having trouble removing ticks around my cats' eyelids. I didn't want anything sharp or metal near their eyes.
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Isn't there a theory that Lyme disease was created by the government on an island... And that it's where all these ticks originally came from?
I don't even recall whether it's theory or historical fact.
Edit:
"The US House of Representatives has called for an investigation into whether the spread of Lyme disease had its roots in a Pentagon experiment in weaponising ticks."
The review would have to assess the scope of the experiment and “whether any ticks or insects used in such experiment were released outside of any laboratory by accident or experiment design”. -Guardian article
Its definitely not fact. Its a naturally occurring disease which used to have a more geographically limited distribution.
In response to your edit, there's no evidence of that and there's plenty of evidence that the bacteria existed in North America before humans.
The book you're looking for is Lab 257 by Michael C Carroll. I started but never finished it.
I recognize that Congress has asked for the investigaton, but Congress is also run by low-grade morons.
"It turned out that the bacterium was circulating in wildlife long before Lyme disease became a known illness in humans. Ticks collected in 1945 from the eastern end of Long Island and mice collected in 1894 on Cape Cod were found to be infected with B. burgdorferi.
This means that B. burgdorferi already existed in wildlife on Long Island—neighbor to Plum Island—for nearly ten years and on Cape Cod for fifty years before the time period in question. And Ft. Terry, the predecessor to the Plum Island facility, wasn’t even activated by the Army Chemical Corps until 1952, noted Telford."
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