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kbaker 13 hours ago [-]
We have (had?) some ticks in our backyard and I came across these which I thought was a clever attack angle: tick tubes.
Permethrin-soaked cotton balls in a tube, mice find them and build nests out of the freely available cotton, ticks that the mice have gathered while walking around die when they come back to the nest.
felix-the-cat 12 hours ago [-]
It does work a little, but it's even more effective to just get some chickens. I did find permethrin works great on clothing - when I used to go hunting a lot I'd get ticks on me every time, and the thing is they climb off of your boots in the car and go under the seats or wherever so you don't get bitten until three days later when you're driving back from grocery shopping or whatever. After I started using permethrin and sprayed the floor of my car with it I never saw another tick again.
mrWiz 3 hours ago [-]
Chickens are very effective at removing ticks, but “just” getting some chickens is a little bit more work than tossing tubes outside.
greenavocado 11 hours ago [-]
Wow this is extremely insightful. I need to spray my car floor since I live in tick country.
tclancy 10 hours ago [-]
Would want to be careful if you have cats. Also appears to not be readily available in the EU?
What's interesting about this study is that ticks were reduced by 50% with untreated woodchips (no pesticides!)
hammock 5 hours ago [-]
I mean, yeah. Ticks live in grasses not on the ground. If you walk on bare trail and don’t brush on grass or other plants your chance of a tick is much lower
cactusplant7374 5 hours ago [-]
It's only hazardous when wet. I spray my clothes and then let them dry on the clothesline.
wahnfrieden 2 hours ago [-]
Don't sweat?
opwieurposiu 3 days ago [-]
If you are out in the woods and you come upon a roughly circular area of crushed down grass, that is a deer bed. Try and avoid walking through it, deer beds are full of ticks.
The deer trails are a lot harder to avoid.
umpalumpaaa 15 hours ago [-]
I avoid grass all together- especially in the woods.
I’m pretty wary of ticks, when you go for hikes just do a body check after. Also, I tend to go with long pants (even in summer, I dislike bugs more than the sweat).
Plus a lightweight windbreaker can help to cover upper body. Plus it limits sun exposure which is also harmful.
topgrain2 14 hours ago [-]
Linen clothes are awesome. Long trousers and long sleeves and almost as cool as short sleeves and shorts in shade, and cooler in direct sun.
xattt 5 hours ago [-]
Tell me your linen ironing tricks. I have a linen shirt that I dread wearing because of the effort that goes into getting it wrinkle free after every wash.
scarmig 4 hours ago [-]
Just own the wrinkles. Linen isn't meant to look perfectly structured.
littlestymaar 13 hours ago [-]
Linen is the most underappreciated fabric. It's cool in both ways. I don't understand why so few people wear linen in summer.
topgrain2 12 hours ago [-]
Yeah I’m a huge fan, lots of linen and thin, fine cotton that’s not been formaldehyde treated (so, not “non-iron”) on me in hot months. I even have an open-weave linen sweater that’s comfortable into the 90s of degrees F. I’ve got a few high-twist wool pieces that are nice in the heat, but they’re more specialized, less everyday wear sorta of things.
Dedicated summer clothes in trad fabrics are a ton less durable than their winter counterparts, though, for the simple reason that they’re much lighter-constructed. Individual pieces can be had plenty cheap if you bargain-hunt and shop used, but you cycle through more of them than, say, heavy-weight denim or a hefty tweed. Still, mine usually last a few years. Cycling them out seasonally means they don’t wear as fast as some synthetic-blend shirt you wear year-round, so you may not get more wears out of them, but they last a good long while in calendar time.
But man, do they breathe better than just about any of the fancy “tech” fabrics. And feel nicer. Durability, though, is an issue, and you have to get the fit closer to correct than many shoppers may be used to, because most of them won’t have much stretch (no cheating by blending in some nylon or whatever, like a “tech” fabric would)
SoftTalker 12 hours ago [-]
Cost, more complicated in the laundry, prone to wrinkling, and air-conditioning. Linen clothing was more popular before AC was invented.
foobarian 5 hours ago [-]
I would like to but they are frustratingly hard to find
Analemma_ 13 hours ago [-]
Some people don't like the scratchy feel of linen compared to cotton, although there are now linen-synthetic blends which ameliorate this almost entirely.
mc32 12 hours ago [-]
I have not come across linens that are scratchy. They can be coarse but not scratchy. Blends can be fine fibers. Coarse wool I do find scratchy, unless it’s cold then the scratchiness goes away. Seems like Belgian linen is good.
Do not do so if a cat will be anywhere near the clothes or compound. It’s super harmful to cats.
sarchertech 12 hours ago [-]
Lethal dermal exposure is somewhere near 100mg/kg.
I probably wouldn’t wear permethrin treated pants and let a cat sit on my lap, but “anywhere near the clothes” is a pretty big exaggeration of the danger.
If I'm going off trail I cram my jeans into my boots and shake everything out before getting in the car. Ontario ticks are just a part of the experience now :/
cortesoft 12 hours ago [-]
My body helps me with this goal by being ridiculously allergic to all grasses.
gcanyon 6 hours ago [-]
Seems likely that ticks should go in the same category as mosquitoes -- how long until we use gene-drive tech to completely eradicate them?
washbasin 14 hours ago [-]
Through a combination of two of my hobbies, I learned that pyrethroids are toxic to aquatic animals. Glad to see that they used "locations [that] were situated away from waterbodies".
Pyrethroids are very powerful tools for insect control (and non-toxic to humans) but any place where you have runoff or ground seepage is going to be a problem.
Aren't those places the ones most likely for ticks to thrive -- areas near bodies of water where animals like deer come to drink?
So hot take: this would only be useful in places where there are not a lot of ticks?
(PS: Permethrin-sprayed clothing is very effective.)
e28eta 14 hours ago [-]
They’re also very toxic to cats, which is why dogs & cats have different flea & tick medicines.
zukzuk 12 hours ago [-]
Also bad news if your dog is prone to seizures, as mine was.
MegaDeKay 14 hours ago [-]
Deer ticks will go after pretty much anything warm blooded: coyotes, mice, dogs, etc etc etc.
Proximity to water doesn't seem to factor much either. Where I live, ticks this year are horrendous and everywhere.
pfdietz 14 hours ago [-]
This reminds me I need to respray my tick pants. Thanks.
matsemann 11 hours ago [-]
No ticks at the altitude I reside. But with global warming it's slowly creeping up towards the towns further down. Same with Spanish slugs. Will soon be able to thrive here as well.
sojournerc 10 hours ago [-]
We have dog ticks at 8000 feet in Colorado, not sure how much altitude affects them.
estearum 5 hours ago [-]
I think temperature is the relevant variable
Hnrobert42 13 hours ago [-]
Calls to mind one of my favorite Simpsons moments.
I've spread beneficial nematodes several times before and the following 2-3 years I get notably fewer tick bites. They are a bit of a pain to spread over any significant area.
andrewl 7 hours ago [-]
Can you give us some more detail on the nematodes, or point us to an article?
j_bum 3 hours ago [-]
Commenting for future reference in case OP ever responds. Would love to learn more
pcmaffey 10 hours ago [-]
A healthy wolf population is the proper (trophic cascading) solution to the tick epidemic.
gbalduzzi 10 hours ago [-]
Can you expand on this provide me pointer to research for this? I am not an expert in the fields but it seems very interesting
pcmaffey 9 hours ago [-]
The most cited research studied wolves' affect on elk populations in Yellowstone restoring riparian habitats(1).
Wolves' impact on the spread of chronic wasting disease (CWD) in deer has also been studied(2). “CWD prevalence could be halved within a decade and eliminated within the century if a pack of wolves consistently and selectively removed 15% of deer in a closed population” (Waldner, 2016)
I don't know if wolves' impact on tick populations has been explicitly studied, but you can find research on habitat diversity reducing ticks(3); and it follows that the lack of predators contributes to deer population explosion, which in turn provides an unbounded vector for the tick epidemic.
I would much rather encounter a hungry tick on a recreational trail than a hungry wolf
rescripting 10 hours ago [-]
A hungry tick is much more likely to make your life miserable because you’re significantly more likely to encounter one in ecosystems with both species.
trollbridge 9 hours ago [-]
Make sure the wolves are well fed.
orbital-decay 49 minutes ago [-]
You just have to outrun the other hikers.
8 hours ago [-]
jmye 4 hours ago [-]
Given the utter paucity of wolf attacks on humans (vastly, incomprehensibly lower than the rates of Lyme disease), this is a deeply silly thing to worry about.
It’s really clear, sometimes, who hasn’t seen a place that isn’t paved.
bhouston 5 hours ago [-]
We need a vaccine for Lyme disease, it would be a lot more effective than paying $3K per kilometre of path per year.
DGAP 5 hours ago [-]
One existed, it was pulled from the market in the early 2000s. There's still a dog one, and there is at least one which is in late stage trials in the US today.
acdha 5 hours ago [-]
Thanks to barratry the one developed in the 90s was pulled from the market on spurious grounds:
It will be good to have, but it will make people more negligent, as there exist lots of bad tick based diseases, not just Lyme.
tamimio 14 hours ago [-]
I got bitten by a mosquito in Ottawa a couple years ago that sent me to the hospital.. I stopped near the river while cycling to see a raccoon for few seconds, was more than enough for that lil sucker to do the job.
winxton 12 hours ago [-]
I got bitten by a tick at a cottage near Ottawa and got a fever then bell's palsy a month later. I didn't even notice I got bit at all at the time. A year later, I went to the hospital for a swollen knee and had surgery done, and ended up being tested positive for lyme disease. The doc says you're too young to have bell's palsy and arthritis. Careful out there!
j_bum 3 hours ago [-]
Thanks for sharing. Were you able to resolve the Lyme?
pfdietz 13 hours ago [-]
There are some potentially very nasty diseases spread by ticks and insects. For example, flaviviruses like West Nile, Dengue, and Powassan (which debilitated and ultimately killed the wife of Canadian fantasy author Charles de Lint.)
Not to mention Malaria, which kills over half a million people a year.
intrasight 6 hours ago [-]
And has killed a large fraction of all humans who have ever lived.
OutOfHere 5 hours ago [-]
It has, but it also has saved a lot of people by slowing down invasions.
nephihaha 12 hours ago [-]
Some birds eat ticks including guinea fowl of all things.
mr_toad 7 hours ago [-]
Chickens love them.
analog31 4 hours ago [-]
I've heard 'possums too.
beautiful_apple 15 hours ago [-]
> Twenty 50-m trail segments across two sites were randomly assigned to intervention groups: untreated woodchip borders, deltamethrin-treated woodchip borders, and ten assigned to untreated controls.
> Treated woodchips reduced I. scapularis adult and nymph density by 99 % (incidence rate ratio (IRR) = 0.01, 95 % CI: 0.001–0.08) relative to controls, while untreated woodchips achieved a 48 % reduction (IRR = 0.52, 95 % CI: 0.34–0.78).
aaron695 14 hours ago [-]
[dead]
bluerooibos 13 hours ago [-]
Another worrying proxy for how deeply climate change is bleeding into everyday life: coffee prices, orange juice prices, and now having to engineer huge trail areas with woodchips just so people can avoid being bitten by exploding tick populations.
mantas 13 hours ago [-]
Ticks are a problem regardless. And they don’t like too much heat. So climate warming may even reduce their population in some parts. Or, more likely, move them up north. Giving relieve to some and headache to others…
Lyme disease vaccine would help a ton though. I’ve had Lyme 3 times by now. Thankfully encephalitis stab is a thing.
Dumblydorr 13 hours ago [-]
They don’t like heat? That seems incorrect. If true, Then why are they a huge problem in TX and other southerly areas, and are only now spreading north?
SoftTalker 12 hours ago [-]
Different species I belive. Ticks in Texas are differnent from ticks in Ottowa. Most lyme disease in the US is concentrated in the northeast and northern great lakes states and into Canada (though it is spreading over the past few decades).
Texas has the 'Lone star Tick' primarily. But in Michigan for example we've had the Blacklegged tick (which is the main species known to carry Lyme in our state...) for a looong time.
bitwalker 12 hours ago [-]
They seem to be much less active on hot days compared to cooler days in my experience - though I can't say why. I've definitely observed a difference over the years though.
That said, whether it is hotter or cooler doesn't make much of a difference in terms of how you go about your day - you pretty much have to assume you can encounter them regardless.
andrewl 7 hours ago [-]
I think it's that they need humidity or else they dry out. So hot and humid is fine. Hot and arid is what they have a problem with.
bluGill 13 hours ago [-]
They are a huge problem in Minnesota as well.
cmrdporcupine 12 hours ago [-]
It's the length and depth of cold days in the winter that can potentially limit their breeding populations, is my understanding. So the issue is that more northerly areas are getting much more variance in temperature and lacking long deep consistent cold periods.
Up and down cycles in temperature have always been a thing on the North American continent but climate change has made it even more variable. We will still get places where it gets very very cold but not for the consistent chunks of time it takes to set back tick populations significantly.
TLDR I don't think it's the heat or cold per se but the variance.
And yes climate change is absolutely the prime factor in their spread. Into places where they were not ever a threat before.
mgerdts 9 hours ago [-]
I’ve seen a tick in Wisconsin every month of the year over the past five years or so. That is I’ve seen a January tick one year, February tick that same year or another year, etc. Whenever there is a bit of a warm spell they appear. Presumably small upward trends in temperature allows such warm spells to happen more frequently.
Marsymars 10 hours ago [-]
> So the issue is that more northerly areas are getting much more variance in temperature and lacking long deep consistent cold periods.
It impacts the population, but even a couple solid weeks of -20C weather doesn't seem to be enough to eradicate them.
b112 9 hours ago [-]
Ticks have always been around Ottawa, and even in 2011? I recall -40C for well over a week, and obviously cold temps around that week.
Insects lay eggs, and also go dormant under fallen leaves typically. The snow + leaves insulates them, it's how live insects survive the winter.
If you watch robins in the spring, before the ground thaws, you'll see them flipping over leaves. They're eating loads of insects hiding, most still torpid from the cold.
-40C isn't a problem for ticks to live through in this way.
In terms of population, everything follows predator/prey cycles. Nothing is static. It's normal for populations to "explode", eventually predators will grow in numbers too.
I see it with noseeums here, and dragonflies. There are almost no noseeums this year, but loads of dragonflies, which means the dragonfly population will collapse, and soon (couple of years) the noseemums will be relentless. But then the dragonflies will grow in numbers, with plentiful food, and the cycle will repeat.
It's natural.
Global warming may shift habitats, but these ticks are normally here. They're not new.
chairmansteve 5 hours ago [-]
If there was more diversity in predators and prey, the population cycles would have smaller amplitudes. The large swings are often symptoms of a collapsing ecosystem.
cmrdporcupine 6 hours ago [-]
The lowest recorded temperature in Ottawa in the last 40 years was -33.1c in 1996. It hasn't been down to -40 since like 1911.
You might be recalling wind chill temperatures, which would not be relevant here. They're subjective perceived temperatures for hairless apes.
However it does occasionally get to (real) -40C ish in Edmonton area, and they now have populations of blacklegged ticks. But very small populations.
Like I said above, the issue is not the absolute lows or highs, it's durations of cold, which impact their ability to recover and produce large quantities of eggs in the spring. This was literally in an article I was reading about ticks the other day, don't make me hunt for it.
Black legged ticks are not new to Ontario, but they absolutely are to places like central Alberta. And the Lone Star tick is moving north for similar reasons and will be established here in Ontario shortly as well.
bluerooibos 7 hours ago [-]
> Ticks are a problem regardless.
Ticks in my part of the world were never such a large problem. It was rare that you'd get one on your leg in the field behind our house, and now, you literally can't walk through the grass each year without having 10+ on your legs in a matter of minutes. Warmer and wetter weather and fewer hard winters. The presence of Lyme disease has also increased in them.
I have direct experience of this, so downvote all you want, climate change deniers.
kzrdude 12 hours ago [-]
Norway is projected to have growth in ticks and new tick species because of climate change (warmer and more humid climate), so that's one example of it moving north (though ticks seem to always have been in Norway?)
mihular 13 hours ago [-]
AFAIK there was a Lyme disease vaccine, but was discontinued, probably because it wasn't effective enough, I don't remember the details.
There has been a vaccine for dogs and cats for a while now, not sure why it hasn't been released for humans yet. Lyme can be really horrible. Some people we know have a 30-something son who was very active (camping, hiking, rock climbing, etc.) until he was bitten by a tick. Now he's quadriplegic.
nik282000 10 hours ago [-]
Lots of drugs work for dogs and cats because they don't live longer than 25yrs. A human has 3-4x the lifespan during which side effects can be worse than the disease.
kadoban 10 hours ago [-]
Is that true? I don't know of really any medicine that has side effects 25 years down the line. Would we even know? We don't test new meds that long before release.
Isn't it more because meds are cheaper to test on animals and liability is much lower?
nik282000 8 hours ago [-]
When I asked why there is no human equivalent of flea/tick drops my vet said it was because "when you only live to be 20, you don't worry about smoking when you are 10."
b112 9 hours ago [-]
I think the original, mouse brain derived Japanese Enephilitis vaccine, now discontinued, caused symptoms years later.
But prions were the cause, and those are slow acting.
The new, safer vaccine is only recommended if you're going to Japan or surrounding areas, and planning to going outside the city.
SoftTalker 12 hours ago [-]
Typically because it's rare enough that the cost/side-effect risk of the vaccine isn't judged to be worth it.
Humans generally aren't vaccinated for Rabies either, unless you are e.g. a veterinarian who might have a higher chance of exposure to it.
SoftTalker 12 hours ago [-]
So there's no natural immunity after having it once? How would a vaccine work then?
DANmode 10 hours ago [-]
“Lyme” colloquially covers half a dozen to a dozen different bacterial infections.
zukzuk 12 hours ago [-]
There are many strains. You will develop immunity to one strain, but not the others.
I assume a vaccine would try to be multivalent.
cmrdporcupine 12 hours ago [-]
I don't understand why we're not vaccinating deer populations, even if we're not vaccinating humans out of safety concerns, etc.
That and deer populations need to be significantly culled (along with rodents, the other part of the Lyme / deer tick population cycle).
In any case, lack of long consistent extended cold spells in the winter to set back their breeding population is the reason they've moving further north. Which is tied directly to climate change.
chairmansteve 5 hours ago [-]
Rodent populations are notoriously hard to control. But it seems that a deer cull would be easy. I am surprisec that they are not done.
giardini 5 hours ago [-]
cmrdporcupine says "I don't understand why we're not vaccinating deer populations, even if we're not vaccinating humans out of safety concerns, etc.
That and deer populations need to be significantly culled (along with rodents, the other part of the Lyme / deer tick population cycle)."
Yep, we should extend the deer hunting seasons so we can vaccinate 'em with lead (I'll leave the rat hunting to others).
bethekidyouwant 11 hours ago [-]
I believe mice are the main host of tick populations
cmrdporcupine 11 hours ago [-]
The black legged tick has a complicated lifecycle which includes both rodents and deer (or other large mammals I believe)
nik282000 10 hours ago [-]
Clearly we should be banning all rodent/deer contact until the tick population is under control.
Permethrin-soaked cotton balls in a tube, mice find them and build nests out of the freely available cotton, ticks that the mice have gathered while walking around die when they come back to the nest.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permethrin - see other animals, I can never get anchor links to copy on mobile.
https://beyondpesticides.org/dailynewsblog/2009/09/occupatio...
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27756609/
The deer trails are a lot harder to avoid.
I’m pretty wary of ticks, when you go for hikes just do a body check after. Also, I tend to go with long pants (even in summer, I dislike bugs more than the sweat).
Plus a lightweight windbreaker can help to cover upper body. Plus it limits sun exposure which is also harmful.
Dedicated summer clothes in trad fabrics are a ton less durable than their winter counterparts, though, for the simple reason that they’re much lighter-constructed. Individual pieces can be had plenty cheap if you bargain-hunt and shop used, but you cycle through more of them than, say, heavy-weight denim or a hefty tweed. Still, mine usually last a few years. Cycling them out seasonally means they don’t wear as fast as some synthetic-blend shirt you wear year-round, so you may not get more wears out of them, but they last a good long while in calendar time.
But man, do they breathe better than just about any of the fancy “tech” fabrics. And feel nicer. Durability, though, is an issue, and you have to get the fit closer to correct than many shoppers may be used to, because most of them won’t have much stretch (no cheating by blending in some nylon or whatever, like a “tech” fabric would)
I probably wouldn’t wear permethrin treated pants and let a cat sit on my lap, but “anywhere near the clothes” is a pretty big exaggeration of the danger.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10822630/
So hot take: this would only be useful in places where there are not a lot of ticks?
(PS: Permethrin-sprayed clothing is very effective.)
Proximity to water doesn't seem to factor much either. Where I live, ticks this year are horrendous and everywhere.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NGv6RASFsY4&t=26s
Wolves' impact on the spread of chronic wasting disease (CWD) in deer has also been studied(2). “CWD prevalence could be halved within a decade and eliminated within the century if a pack of wolves consistently and selectively removed 15% of deer in a closed population” (Waldner, 2016)
I don't know if wolves' impact on tick populations has been explicitly studied, but you can find research on habitat diversity reducing ticks(3); and it follows that the lack of predators contributes to deer population explosion, which in turn provides an unbounded vector for the tick epidemic.
1. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S235198942...
2. https://wildlifecoexistence.org/blog/wolves-and-chronic-wast...
3. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12445845/
It’s really clear, sometimes, who hasn’t seen a place that isn’t paved.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2870557/
The good news is that there’s a promising new one in the pipeline but Lyme is only one of the diseases which ticks spread:
https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-deta...
> Treated woodchips reduced I. scapularis adult and nymph density by 99 % (incidence rate ratio (IRR) = 0.01, 95 % CI: 0.001–0.08) relative to controls, while untreated woodchips achieved a 48 % reduction (IRR = 0.52, 95 % CI: 0.34–0.78).
Lyme disease vaccine would help a ton though. I’ve had Lyme 3 times by now. Thankfully encephalitis stab is a thing.
https://www.cdc.gov/lyme/data-research/facts-stats/lyme-dise...
Texas has the 'Lone star Tick' primarily. But in Michigan for example we've had the Blacklegged tick (which is the main species known to carry Lyme in our state...) for a looong time.
That said, whether it is hotter or cooler doesn't make much of a difference in terms of how you go about your day - you pretty much have to assume you can encounter them regardless.
Up and down cycles in temperature have always been a thing on the North American continent but climate change has made it even more variable. We will still get places where it gets very very cold but not for the consistent chunks of time it takes to set back tick populations significantly.
TLDR I don't think it's the heat or cold per se but the variance.
And yes climate change is absolutely the prime factor in their spread. Into places where they were not ever a threat before.
It impacts the population, but even a couple solid weeks of -20C weather doesn't seem to be enough to eradicate them.
Insects lay eggs, and also go dormant under fallen leaves typically. The snow + leaves insulates them, it's how live insects survive the winter.
If you watch robins in the spring, before the ground thaws, you'll see them flipping over leaves. They're eating loads of insects hiding, most still torpid from the cold.
-40C isn't a problem for ticks to live through in this way.
In terms of population, everything follows predator/prey cycles. Nothing is static. It's normal for populations to "explode", eventually predators will grow in numbers too.
I see it with noseeums here, and dragonflies. There are almost no noseeums this year, but loads of dragonflies, which means the dragonfly population will collapse, and soon (couple of years) the noseemums will be relentless. But then the dragonflies will grow in numbers, with plentiful food, and the cycle will repeat.
It's natural.
Global warming may shift habitats, but these ticks are normally here. They're not new.
You might be recalling wind chill temperatures, which would not be relevant here. They're subjective perceived temperatures for hairless apes.
However it does occasionally get to (real) -40C ish in Edmonton area, and they now have populations of blacklegged ticks. But very small populations.
Like I said above, the issue is not the absolute lows or highs, it's durations of cold, which impact their ability to recover and produce large quantities of eggs in the spring. This was literally in an article I was reading about ticks the other day, don't make me hunt for it.
Black legged ticks are not new to Ontario, but they absolutely are to places like central Alberta. And the Lone Star tick is moving north for similar reasons and will be established here in Ontario shortly as well.
Ticks in my part of the world were never such a large problem. It was rare that you'd get one on your leg in the field behind our house, and now, you literally can't walk through the grass each year without having 10+ on your legs in a matter of minutes. Warmer and wetter weather and fewer hard winters. The presence of Lyme disease has also increased in them.
I have direct experience of this, so downvote all you want, climate change deniers.
Isn't it more because meds are cheaper to test on animals and liability is much lower?
But prions were the cause, and those are slow acting.
The new, safer vaccine is only recommended if you're going to Japan or surrounding areas, and planning to going outside the city.
Humans generally aren't vaccinated for Rabies either, unless you are e.g. a veterinarian who might have a higher chance of exposure to it.
I assume a vaccine would try to be multivalent.
That and deer populations need to be significantly culled (along with rodents, the other part of the Lyme / deer tick population cycle).
In any case, lack of long consistent extended cold spells in the winter to set back their breeding population is the reason they've moving further north. Which is tied directly to climate change.
That and deer populations need to be significantly culled (along with rodents, the other part of the Lyme / deer tick population cycle)."
Yep, we should extend the deer hunting seasons so we can vaccinate 'em with lead (I'll leave the rat hunting to others).