I'm so pissed!! So many people I know have fucking Lyme's disease!! And no one says shit!! They don't even know how to treat it. Fuck!!

I guess I will be the sole person to point out that "chronic Lyme" is viewed by the medical establishment as a pseudoscientific diagnosis. Not really interested in debating this but lotta people have no idea that it isn't considered a legit thing, so for our readers here ya go. Not to diminish peoples' suffering from whatever it is they're going through but it probably is not caused by being bitten by a tick several years ago.

The same medical establishment that only recently admitted that chronic fatigue syndrome was real and not something women were making up for attention? The same medical establishment that ignores and gaslights those of us with "invisible illnesses"? (I've been told my disablity isn't real by a doctor before and so have many others!) The same medical establishment that treats different races differently due to racist nonsense thats still taught in med school? The same medical establishment that does conversion therapy (torture) on autistic children?

Good thing they've never been wrong or caught lying before.
- Sure now do this analysis on the alternative medicine community
- Reminds of me of trans healthcare. It’s the Wild West in a lot of ways simply because doctors don’t give enough of a shit to “properly” do advanced studies of things. Like, we know the basic tools are safe, but a lot of bigger questions about medical patterns you fit, how longer term HRT might affect the body in one way or another, it’s a big unknown space, but a lot of doctors just shrug and ask what you really are and stop thinking there.
  
  Like even something that’s sorta becoming a common treatment, like Progesterone still gets slapped with like “unverified” smears, despite years of reports through the grapevine, because again they can be added to actually do official research.
  
  When I was closeted I heard some friends of mine at the time in med school joke about trans people, and basically say they taught absolutely nothing about them. Among other hurtful thing.
I guess I will be the sole person to point out that "chronic Lyme" is viewed by the medical establishment as a pseudoscientific diagnosis.

The idea that disease infections can cause permanent organ damage and ongoing health problems even after the disease itself is gone is, bafflingly, something that's only started being accepted since covid started doing that on a big enough scale that researchers a) had no choice but to acknowledge it, and b) started getting a little funding to go and look to see if other diseases also did that sort of thing as well (they do, it's just covid is particularly bad about it and also extremely contagious).
TRUE

Lyme disease is a real thing but usually (especially in "left" context) when someone says "lyme" there is a 90% chance that is NOT what they are talking about. It's a conspiracy theory promoted by anti-science grifters to entice people to travel to spend weeks or months at retreats getting long term antibiotics infusions or whatever else.

The suffering on the ground is real but total misdirection. It's kind of like the satanic panic or something.

I posted recent recent clinical practice guidelines, this stuff is addressed in there. They know its fake.

AFAIK lyme disease has a pretty good prognosis assuming you have access to health care. And if you don't that is a different thing and whether "they" do know how to treat it or not, doesn't matter much to you .
To add a bit more context: Its not as simple as "chronic lyme is fake", because literally like 10% of lyme disease cases will have lingering symptoms after treatment. To distinguish it from quacks who say anyone with vaguely similar symptoms must have chronic lyme (even if there's no evidence they had a lyme disease infection in the first place), scientists refer to it as PTLDS (Post-Treatment Lyme Disease Syndrome).

If the person actually had lyme disease to begin with, it may well be PTLDS symptoms, and may well be helped by a second course of antibiotics. If they didn't actually confirm it was lyme though, or the lyme infection was years ago, it's way more questionable. Their symptoms probably aren't fake but they may well be getting taken advantage of by quack doctors, and making their health worse by continuing to take antibiotics for extended periods of time, etc.
Yeah "chronic Lyme" is not a real illness. Lyme disease is very much real obviously, but not chronic Lyme, which is usually used by quacks to sell snake oil, or as an excuse by celebrities to disappear from the limelight for a while.
- lymelight

"Why don't people go outside anymore?"

Your outdoor cats and pollution killed all the birds, your cars and traps killed all the possums and now the grass is filled with ticks which will give you a horrible illness if they bite you

Which they will because ticks are icky

i used to go outside to stack rocks but that's illegal now
Outdoor cats (that are not properly managed, like used as mousers in a barn) are walking ecological disasters.
- Even in barns they can still kill non pest animals while spreading T gondii
  
  Barn owls for the win
Release tick eating animals and start killing more deer
- Release tick eating animals and ~~start killing more deer~~ stop killing wolves and coyotes. Also ban cars and glass facades
We feed an outdoor cat. And also family of possums and a family of raccoons. Haha. Tons of government spy drones flying around all day too I feel rather content knowing I have some tick killers around.

there used to be a vaccine for lymes disease that was like 80% effective but it wasn't profitable so now we don't get it

they give it to pets. it's the same vaccine. the costs of getting through regulation for humans was too much and not worthwhile.

people who think vaccines are a money making plot needs to get get their heads screwed back on. so many vaccines held back because of being insufficiently profitable.
- people who think vaccines are a money making plot needs to get get their heads screwed back on. so many vaccines held back because of being insufficiently profitable.
  
  Doesn't that necessarily mean that the ones that aren't held back are profitable?
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Thought I read they're in stage 3 of trials for a Lyme disease vaccine now. Idk, too lazy to look up the legitimacy.
- there was one in the 90s that got to market and was withdrawn 4 years later after a couple (seemingly unrelated) reports of arthritis symptoms after taking it

I wish we could go in the woods without fearing for our health. As I begin to understand the ecological causes of the proliferation of this and other diseases like Chronic Wasting Disease in America, it is setting in for me that American settler colonialists and later iterations of land developers seriously destroyed the balanced of North America's ecosystem.

When touching grass backfires

Assuming you are talking about actual Lyme Disease, it's a bit confusing because there seems to be a fairly well established treatment protocol. Here is oodles of stuff about it.

2020 Guidelines for the Prevention, Diagnosis and Treatment of Lyme Disease by Infectious Diseases Society of America, American Academy of Neurology, and American College of Rheumatology

A summary guideline for clinicians (PDF)
Update for family practitioners and other non-ID docs Lyme Disease: Updated Recommendations | AAFP

Spongebob might mean chronic lyme, which IIRC is dismissed by most doctors without further investigation.
- might mean
  
  so you think that people who are on the internet talking about "chronic lyme disease" are so dumb they don't even know the difference? that they haven't even bothered to educate themselves about rudimentary things like the meanings of words individual words?
  
  hmm
  
  But Ya fake diseases are not generally given a lot of attention. This question has been reviewed on a collective level and found to be without substance as a general matter. There is no investigation to do.
  
  A person's actual complaints ought to be taken seriously by their responsible provider. If there is an actual physical pathology, these fake ass diagnoses are only distractions that delay treatment.
  
  https://www.niaid.nih.gov/diseases-conditions/chronic-lyme-disease
  
  https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/does-everybody-have-chronic-lyme-disease-does-anyone/
  
  https://quackwatch.org/related/lyme/
  
  ETA: linebreaks between links

on the one hand, ticks carry lyme disease

on the other hand, ticks carry a disease that makes people allergic to red meat vegan-seitan

apparently some people all meat.

forced feminization but for veganism
I mean, the red meat thing is just one factor. It's a whole slew of other issues that come with the disease, but meat allergy is clickbaity. Arthro Pod did an episode on it, I believe.

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That's horrifying schizophrenia is worse than tinnitus you're gonna hear a demon man yelling insults at your door at 4am and knowing for sure it's fake won't make it stop
- I’ve heard that’s seemingly a western thing with the disease. Which for some reason makes me feel stronger about the Lyme disease causing it haha
would this be unlikely for those who've never experienced any noticeable symptoms after a tick bite?
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Lyme’s symptoms mimick other things like Alzheimer’s and fibromyalgia, making diagnosis difficult some times. Sometimes you need a ‘Lyme Literate Medical Doctor’ who specializes in tick borne illnesses to diagnose Lyme’s.

Early stage Lyme’s is treatable with NSAIDS and doxycycline antibiotics, comrade. According to a family member who is a FNP in Lyme territory, even the later symptoms are treatable.

I’m genuinely asking, is it a failing of Uncle Sam or a failing of medical science? I get the impression it isnt the government but I’m also a pretty dumb kind of guy so

fibromyalgia

iirc fibromyalgia isn't a specific thing either, just "lol chronic pain we can't figure out" but the insurance companies need a formal category to pay out
- Yeah. Fibromyalgia is "you have pain, we don't think you're just drug seeking, we're not investigating any further."
I just skimmed a Harvard Health article that broke it down to a failing of the economic system, which in turn led to a medical failing due to lack of research / lack of time to diagnose. The article ends by saying that the organization of affected people and local doctors could lead to increased care.

Harvard Health article

???? how many people do you know are getting bitten by ticks

Not OP, but around here, getting bitten by ticks is very common. Almost everyone I knew who liked being outdoorsy had been bitten at least once, and usually had several tick-bite stories. If you don't do a thorough tick check after every hike or jaunt into weeds or woods, you're playing roulette and will get one before too long. I myself have had to pull ticks out of me probably around 10-15 times (mostly as a kid when I was less careful when out hiking).

edit to add: Even when you're careful, ticks can still be easy to miss and you can still get bitten. The little fuckers are notorious for how sneaky they can be. I didn't mean the above to imply that someone who gets bit is at fault for not being careful enough, because it still can happen sometimes even when you take precautions, it just becomes much less likely.
- This is why I always wear long pants and shirts while on a hike. Learnt this lesson as a 15 year old during a 3 day 60km hike. Our group all got bitten by ticks sometime on day 2, walking though tall grass in shorts and short socks.
doesn't literally everyone who spends any time in a woodsy area gets them?? i got bitten like 6 times a year as a kid and got a couple last year
- Bafflingly, I have never gotten a tick despite being in situations where everyone else does. Mosquitoes love me though :( (leeches and ticks seem to avoid me idk why)

I got lime about month ago, it's not fun.