Unusually aggressive lone star ticks, common in the south-east, are spreading to areas previously too cold for them
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Meat allergy? Unpleasant but ironically good for the environment.
Yeah, Lyme Disease can potentially cause that. It’s weird they’re saying “meat allergy” and not lyme disease, but lyme is pretty bad and can cause lifelong complications (post-treatment lyme disease syndrome)Edit: guess I’m wrong
The lone star tick actually usually does not carry Lyme, you are thinking of deer ticks. This is an entirely different condition that is caused by an allergic reaction to the lone star ticks saliva which your body confuses with carbohydrates found in most mammalian meats leading to a long term meat allergy.
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They don’t refer to it as Lyme because it’s a different issue. It just happens to also be spread by ticks. Lyme disease and Alpha-gal Syndrome are different things but are sometimes comorbities since both are commonly spread by ticks.
If you bothered to read the article, you’d have known this was Alpa-gal Syndrome, not Lyme.
lyme is caused by deer ticks and its a bacterial spirochetes, theres actually a whole cult against chronic lyme which is a pseudoscientific belief thats incurable.
Not only the environment, the overall Americans health too. Each year, 700 000 Americans are dying from heart diseases.
But I’m made of meat!
Vegans:
Honestly, I feel like this is a big fuck you from mother nature, telling us that our industrial farming practices, that are contributing so heavily to climate change, are now worth fuck all. And I am very much not a vegan.
You could join us before the ticks make you :)
I knew they were behind this.
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“They will hunt you, they are like a cross between a lentil and a velociraptor,”
Well, that’s a horrifying image.
Took us vegans a long time, but after hours in our labs we finally are ready to roll out our bio weapon.
Damn you, vegans! I’ll see you in hell!
Shakes fist angrily while collapsing from my simultaneous asphyxiation and heart failure.
And prion diseases.
Yes please! They have good music in hell. Also, in heaven there are only Christian Karens, pedophiles and antivax babies, you know how fucking annoying all those screaming babies are. And then complaining Karens on top of that.
Our insect creations acting like over-sized nano-bytes, go forth my children, save the planet.
NOOOOOOOOO!
Our vegan super soldiers are unaffected.
One of my friends got hit with this. They will have a violent allergic reaction even if they eat fries cooked in beef fat.
What kind of maniac cooks fries in beef fat?
That sounds like a recipe for cardiac arrest.
Steak n’ Shake
That’s actually extremely common. Belgian fries (the original French fries) are originally cooked in beef fat. But nowadays it’s often a beef/plant based fat mix instead. It’s actually quite hard to find vegan fries in Belgium.
The alt right health grifter sphere is currently obsessed with the evils of “seed oils.” Tallow is supposed to be magically better for you.
A couple of steps away from the raw milk drinkers and the “rebel canners.”
McDonald’s does, assuming they haven’t changed that recently.
McDonalds’s hasn’t done this in over 30 years. Unless you think 30 years is recent?
I’ve been told that more recently than the 2000s, but I’ll be honest, I didn’t really do much research into it. Sorry that I offended you by being wrong.
McDonald’s stopped using beef tallow for fries in 1990. I suppose that might be relatively recent if you are an elf.
That confirms the maniac assessment. Look at this guy:
Ronald has quite the theme song, too…
McDonald’s
Yeah we just need to proliferate wild guinea hens and other tick predators to knock their populations down. I’d rather the entire eastern US look like Kauai (random feral poultry) than have ticks take over.
Opossum are native, eat ticks and do not carry rabies. They are heros!
Maybe… but there were so many examples of disastrous consequences for introducing a non native species to control a pest (biological pest control), like thr cane toad in Australia, or ferrets in New Zealand, etc…
“When wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to death”
So when is the government going to deliver my local squadron of tick-squashing gorillas?
The syndrome is not caused by a pathogen but spurs an allergy to a sugar molecule found in mammals and an array of other things, from toothpaste to medical equipment.
Lone star ticks are aggressive and can speedily follow a human target if they detect them. “They will hunt you, they are like a cross between a lentil and a velociraptor,” said Sharon Pitcairn Forsyth, a conservationist who lives in the Washington DC area.
A particular horror is the prospect of brushing up against vegetation containing a massed ball of juvenile lone star ticks, know as a “tick bomb”, that can deliver thousands of tick bites. “They are so tiny you can’t see them but you have to take it seriously or you’ll never get them off you,” said Forsyth, who now carries around a lint roller to remove such clusters.
Many years ago my dog brought in a tic bomb, and got into bed with me. I awoke to my left arm and hand covered in so many sesema seed sized tics I could not even see my skin.
It took hours to get them off me and my dog.
I dodged a bullet cause I didn’t get any illnesses, nor did my dog.
I’m still freaked out though.
Straight nightmare fuel, Jesus Christ mate…
This happened to me once (with deer ticks, not lone star) while I was having a nice walk in the woods high on shrooms. Worst trip of my life.
Why did I read this in bed
I wonder if the tick bomb babies are less likely to transmit anything because they probably haven’t fed on anything yet? I would think they’d have to feed on a mammal to get the compound into their saliva.
😱 😱 😱 !
thats fucking terrifying. imma stay inside
Funny, humanity contributing to the reduction of the climate crisis by increasing the number of ticks causing people to become allergic to meat, meaning less demand for meat, meaning less greenhouse gases being released into the atmosphere as cattle becomes less profitable.
Life, uh, finds a way.
Blood-sucking ticks that trigger a bizarre allergy to meat in the people they bite are exploding in number and spreading across the US, to the extent that they could cover the entire eastern half of the country and infect millions of people, experts have warned
“We’ve seen an explosive increase in these ticks, which is a concern. I imagine alpha-gal will soon include the entire range of the tick, which could become the entire eastern half of the US as there’s not much to stop them. It seems like an oddity now but we could end up with millions of people with an allergy to meat.”
Alpha-gal is a confounding condition because it doesn’t cause an immediate allergic reaction, unlike a peanut allergy, with symptoms often appearing several hours after consuming meat. The syndrome is not caused by a pathogen but spurs an allergy to a sugar molecule found in mammals and an array of other things, from toothpaste to medical equipment. Researchers think the condition can wane over time but is also worsened by further tick bites.
Dairy, another mammalian product, is also off limits. “I’ve learned what I can eat now, but I was so sad when I realized I couldn’t have pizza again, I remember crying in front of a frozen pizza in the supermarket aisle,” she said.
Lone star ticks are aggressive and can speedily follow a human target if they detect them. “They will hunt you, they are like a cross between a lentil and a velociraptor,” said Sharon Pitcairn Forsyth, a conservationist who lives in the Washington DC area.
A particular horror is the prospect of brushing up against vegetation containing a massed ball of juvenile lone star ticks, know as a “tick bomb”, that can deliver thousands of tick bites. “They are so tiny you can’t see them but you have to take it seriously or you’ll never get them off you,” said Forsyth, who now carries around a lint roller to remove such clusters.
Symptoms can also be alarmingly varied – Forsyth said she rarely eats out now because of concerns of contamination in the food and even that alpha-gal could be carried to her airborne, via the steam of cooked meat.
“Some people are scared to leave the house, it’s hard to avoid,” she said. “Many people who get it are over 50, so the first symptom some of them have is a heart attack.”
The spread of alpha-gal comes amid a barrage of disease threats from different ticks that are fanning out across a rapidly warming US. Powassan virus, which can kill people via an inflammation of the brain, is still rare but is growing, as is Babesia, a parasite that causes severe illnesses. Lyme disease, long a feature of the US north-east, is also burgeoning.
“There’s a tremendous urgency to confront this with new therapies but the problem is we are going backwards in terms of funding and support in the US. There have been cuts to the CDC and NIH (National Institutes of Health) which means there is decreasing support. It’s a major concern.”
Where can you end up, after getting bit by a tick?
i remember crying in front of a frozen pizza in the supermarket aisle
Ticks are evil
My wife would be fucked unless this take out some preexisting allergies she has (quinoa, buckwheat, hazelnuts, peanuts, eggs and many legumes including soybeans although she doesn’t react to soy lecithin)
I think you can still eat chicken if you have that
Yeah afaik it’s only red meat
I have a soy allergy too and don’t react to lecithin. My understanding is that by the time the soy is processed into lecithin, the “thing” you’re allergic to is pretty much non-existent and that’s why you don’t react to it.
This isn’t the case for all people who are allergic to soy. This is not medical advice.
Thirding this. I develop a rash even after coming into contact with something that had soybean oil on it, but lecithin is safe (for me).
My dog is alergic to a crazy amount of things and eats hydrolyzed food which apparently changes the proteins enough to not react to it.
My ex ran a very successful barbecue joint in Seattle and Arkansas. She got this and ended up shuttering her business.
Shit, I live in Seattle and love Arkansas barbecue
She used to be at the West Seattle farmer’s market all the time. Girls Gone BBQ.
And now, girl’s gone.
Don’t worry. The meat industry will find a cure fast
No crap. Republicans will be requiring vaccinations
I see the vegans are escalating their tactics.
We’ll convert the bloodmouths, one way or another! The next plan is mosquitoes that make you allergic to cheese.
The condition, known as alpha-gal syndrome, has proliferated from just a few dozen known cases in 2009 to as many as 450,000 now.
Alpha-gal (galactose-alpha-1,3-galactose) is a sugar molecule found in the cells of all mammals except humans and some primatesWell, at least we can still eat each other, it seems. The rich be lookin’ mighty tasty as of late…
If it were up to me, eating the rich would be considered vegan
Well, they have no soul, no emotion, are not human, and seem to feel no pain.
Dig in.
Forget the alpha male; this is the year of alpha-gal.
Jokes aside does it impact the love of dairy and eggs too?
Dairy, but not eggs. Sufferers can still eat chicken and fish.
And humans and some other primates.
Thank god. I just discovered the magic that is pickled eggs and I refuse to give them up.
As a vegan, I endorse those ticks!
