Note: I’ll not be around today to tend to this diary. I will be driving to the airport at the time this is scheduled to be published.
I’m revisiting tick-borne diseases again. Where we live so many people have been infected with Lyme disease. The CDC for some reason still denies there is such a thing as chronic Lyme disease. I don’t know why. Lyme disease is also under reported. I don’t know why.
Lyme disease is normally caused by a group of bacteria, not just one. Most folks I see with it have up to four different bacteria causing trouble. The worst cases are when their brains are infected. It’s just horrible. The usual suspects here locally are Borrelia burgdorferi, Babesiosis, Borrelia mayonii and Rickettsiosis. In other parts of the country, there are different bacteria that are in the mix of Lyme disease. All of these are extremely difficult to get rid of once you're infected by them for more than a few days. Some Lyme disease experts believe you can never truly get rid of these bacteria once they’ve been in you for several weeks.
The number of cases is growing rapidly each year and has tripled since 1980, they claim. I personally believe it’s actually much higher than that. I got infected with it a couple years ago, but I saw the “ink-stain rash” forming. I watched it spread over the course of four days and knew what it was for sure. Fortunately, I had ObamaCare so I could skype with a doctor in real-time. She took a good look at the rash on my shoulder and concluded I was right. I had Lyme.
She prescribed a course of doxycycline for three weeks. That is the treatment very early on and will take care of the problem. Unfortunately, folks don’t always notice that rash, and it disappears after a while. When a person has been infected for several weeks or a couple months, they have chronic Lyme disease which is extremely difficult to treat.
Recently a new tick-borne pathogen has been infecting folks. This time it’s a virus called Powassan virus. It’s very dangerous as it attacks the brain rapidly. 10% of those that contract it die. 50% of those that recover have permanent brain damage. So far it hasn’t made it to California yet. It’s currently showing up in the northeast and south. You can read about it by clicking on the link: www.npr.org/…
Here’s where mice come into the picture. We all know that deer are blamed for spreading Lyme disease. Mice probably spread Lyme even more, to be honest, because they live all around us and sometimes in our homes. Most animals will chew or scratch off ticks, but not mice. For some reason, mice just don’t care. They’ll have scores of ticks on their ears and around their eyes and seem perfectly content letting ticks suck their blood.
This has led to a very interesting idea as to how to control Lyme Disease. The idea is to place traps out in the woods and in yards that draw in mice.
The traps are metal boxes, about the size of wine bottles, hidden underneath leaves. “Mice love to enter them," Ostfeld says. "They love to enter dark tunnels." For some reason, ticks flock to mice. Other animals groom the bloodsuckers off and kill them. But mice don't. They let the critters attach and feed on their face and ears. These observations gave him an idea: Use the mice to kill the ticks. Turn the mice into a little assassins, who run around the forest executing ticks.
A mouse walks into the box and is swiped with a little brush that applies a drop of the insecticide on its back. "The chemical is the same that people put on their dogs and cats," Ostfeld says. "But it's an even tinier drop, much tinier. So a little bit goes a long way." And it lasts a long time. For weeks after the mouse leaves the box, it kills ticks that land on it.
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