Reason for No Lyme Disease Vaccine

Thanks for posting – I was out in the PA Poconos this weekend and pulled at least 10 ticks off my pants, socks, and legs.  When you have that many on you throughout the course of the day your mind starts thinking that every little itch must be a tick burrowing itself into you.  It was a long night in my hammock.

In the morning I asked my hiking buddy to look at what I tried to peel off during the night:  “No – you don’t want to pull THAT off” was all he said.

With a vaccine at least you’d be worrying about an annoying bug bite, rather than a disease that can disable you.

<p style=”text-align: left;”>Send your primary hiking gear to Insect Shield to last 70 washes, or get Sawyer Permithrin to treat your clothes for 6-7 washes. Phil Werner at Section Hiker has a good method for treating clothes with Sawyer efficiently. Works on chiggers too. And mosquitos.</p>
I’ll ask my friends are the CDC why there are no vaccines.

Treating your clothing is a good idea, and I do, but most people don’t.  You can be out in non-hiking clothing and just walk through some grass.  Plus, if you’re wearing shorts, you’re not fully covered.

I am learning the hard way to treat clothing.  I’ve had half a dozen tick bites the last few years.  When I don’t treat clothing.

I didn’t used to get tick bites.  Maybe global warming?

There are other diseases that ticks carry besides Lyme

Still, the vaccine would be a good choice.  In this case, if an individual didn’t want the vaccine there’d be no risk other humans.  They ought to resolve the issue with perceived side effects.  There must be a solution to the bigger issues of all vaccines also.

Hopefully, there’s a new one coming.

I do hope they come out with a safe, effective vaccine.  It would certainly not need to be considered mandatory.

I have a coworker who has a pacemaker for the rest of her life because of Lyme.

“I have a coworker who has a pacemaker for the rest of her life because of Lyme.”

!!!!! Yikes! sign me up for the vaccine.

Ticks scare me more than bears. I went to visit my mom a few weeks ago in NC, I barely even went outside (I’d go stand out in the yard when my mom would go outside to smoke and talk with her) and I ended up getting a tick that embedded itself in the back of my head. I went on prophylactic antibiotics just in case because my health isn’t the greatest to begin with. And now we’re getting ticks in Alaska, which sucks. Our winters have been mild for several years and our summers warmer, and apparently the ticks are thriving. I haven’t heard of a human being bit yet, but there are pictures of the squirrels just covered in bloated ticks. And there are nastier diseases even than Lyme that ticks can carry. So it’s worrisome.

Yet another unexpected consequence of global warming.. (???most likely I’d reason.) None of them seem to be benign either.

I have read another factor is isolated homes on small amount of acreage.  Good rodent habitat.  Not enough habitat for rodent predators.  More rodents.  More ticks.

It’s complicated

Ticks scare me more than bears.

Yes!!  They’re the most dangerous wildlife most of us will ever encounter, and probably the most prolific.

I do hope they come up with something reliable and safe.  The link up top says the old one was “up to 90%” effective, and following the linked link, that’s really 49 to 92% depending on whether one received two or three injections.  I don’t know how they calculated that effectiveness, but it seems on par with simply checking oneself daily and getting any ticks off before they’ve been there very long.  So I’m wondering if the effectiveness was calculated only for people who didn’t find the ticks and let them stay long enough to start regurgitating or whether it includes the cases where they were removed quickly (in which case “49 to 92% effective” sounds a bit weak).  There did seem to be an obvious improvement between two and three injections, so the vaccine was clearly doing something.