Coronavirus, Covid 19 Discussion and How It Has Affected Your Daily Life Chat Thread

[NorthwoodsChick]

About ticks; it's not wrong to think that any tick can carry any of the tick borne diseases! And ticks travel, thanks to us, and climate change both. We have a couple of new ones in the USA, carrying at least one new nasty disease.
Here in southern Michigan, Lone Star ticks have arrived from the south. Lovely!
Getting a MD, even an infectious disease specialist, to test for more than Lyme disease is at least very difficult! And so 'we don't have those diseases in Michigan' is probably just not true. We see them in dogs, who live in our environment.
More venting here: Bartonella, carried by fleas on cats, can be a problem for us, and for some cats, and there's one lab in the USA who tests effectively for it. Speaking about heart issues... Can't get that test run either.
Mary

Agreed. I fought the 'not in our area' battle, too with a few of my colleagues. But guess what? It is here. Deer tick with Lyme and more and more anaplasmosis. It is most certainly spreading. Southern MI...yes, they should be running full tick panels like it is done in the UP/Wisc and Minn. Endemic areas.

 

[Ninjasquirrel]

Agreed. I fought the 'not in our area' battle, too with a few of my colleagues. But guess what? It is here. Deer tick with Lyme and more and more anaplasmosis. It is most certainly spreading. Southern MI...yes, they should be running full tick panels like it is done in the UP/Wisc and Minn. Endemic areas.

My inlaws dog got Lyme disease from a tick. Otherwise healthy dog. Unfortunately it took her from us

 

[saysfaa]

...
I live in heavy deer tick territory and have seen a handful of these cases over the last 5 years. This year there were dozens with many needing pacemakers. It makes me wonder what has changed because the tick population is always high here and they did not suddenly become more virulent.
...

Changing environment like climate or invasive species effects or such makes sense but seems unlikely to make this much difference in just one year. It would be interesting to know if there are similar differences in other regions.

 

[Folly's place]

Clusters of fairly unusual things do happen, sometimes it's a random event, and sometimes not. And this year in Michigan was very warm and wet, so things were a bit different. Leptospirosis, for example, was very happy in the wet conditions. And coccidiosis did well to, for our birds.
Mary

 

[sourland]

Here it's usually the men that do that! 9 out of 10 times it's a man doing it. Why? lol

I blame it on the testosterone. Here in West central NJ folks are pretty much still masking. Here everyone knows someone who has either been very ill, permanently damaged or has died.

 

[NorthwoodsChick]

My inlaws dog got Lyme disease from a tick. Otherwise healthy dog. Unfortunately it took her from us

I am so sorry.

 

[NorthwoodsChick]

Changing environment like climate or invasive species effects or such makes sense but seems unlikely to make this much difference in just one year. It would be interesting to know if there are similar differences in other regions.

I believe it is the human immune adaptability that has changed. I think I will have to get more chicks to do my part in tick population control

 

[Ninjasquirrel]

I believe it is the human immune adaptability that has changed. I think I will have to get more chicks to do my part in tick population control

Possums eat a lot of ticks too. I havent seen as many out this year. Supposedly they eat 1000s of them a year

 

[NorthwoodsChick]

Possums eat a lot of ticks too. I havent seen as many out this year. Supposedly they eat 1000s of them a year

Opossum creep me out, the rat tail, snarly hissing and the whole playing dead thing is just, well, creepy.

 

[Sammster]

Speaking of heart issues - I just came across this article, today. It's not new information - but it comes from the AHA - and should be thoughtfully considered by those mandating the mRNA shot:

https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/abs/10.1161/circ.144.suppl_1.10712