Chronic Lyme and IDSA

I just finished watching Under Our Skin and I am just so so angry and terrified. Here is my question and I hope maybe someone who has done more research knows the answer. If the CDC/IDSA now readily admit that as many as 300,000 people are infected with Lyme but the majority of those are undiagnosed or misdiagnosed why do they not acknowledge the existence of Chronic Lyme? If you are one of those 300,000 who are not diagnosed and therefore never treated doesn't it stand to reason that you would still have Lyme and that it would become chronic and potentially debilitating? Have they provided any answers for that? Are they somehow suggesting that it may go away on its own due to your own immune system? I hope those questions make sense. I am just trying to understand the reasoning behind their argument that most are undiagnosed but chronic lyme is not real. Undiagnosed/misdiagnosed= no proper treatment= chronic. Right?!?

The articles I read this year while not using the term chronic were stating that if not treated right away could cause very serious if not life threatening long term issues. That would fit my definition of chronic.

When you get an infection, your immune system is supposed to kick in and fight it off. It's why we have antibiotics, to help the immune system fight it off.

I had essentially the same question.

If you get infected, either your immune system fights it off (sometimes with the help of abs), it kills you or some can hang around in the body and only come out to play when conditions are right. Like Epstein Barr.

But the IDSA's position is that lyme doesn't "persist in the body". They believe is goes away on it's own or that the body is not a suitable environment for it to live and survive.

However, if you look at the people that make up the board members for IDSA most have their grants funded by big pharma or worse. It is not in big pharm.'s interest for Lyme to be identified and treated.

They make huge amounts of money selling us drugs like pain meds, muscle relaxants, sleep meds, etc to treat our symptoms. Why would they want to stop that money stream?

The real question is how do they look at themselves in the mirror everyday knowing that they are denying treatment to people who are so severely ill?

The answer to that is that they have no conscience. Look up Martin Shkreli. Just recently he bought the right to distribute a drug that was life saving for some people. He hiked the price from $1.50 a pill to $750 a pill. I saw an interview with him and he said if people need the pill to save their lives, they would find a way to pay for it. He also said that he had the right to charge whatever he wanted for the drug.

He's right, legally. Morally, he's a jerk.

IMHO. I think the pivotal point on chronic Lyme will be discovered and recognized with research into persister cells. The term "chronic" is coined after you have had untreated Lyme for a year or more. Just my way of thinking, but I feel it takes the Lyme bacteria about a year to mutate. Allowing it to mutate to survive inside the host's body, making it close to impossible to eradicate.

Once persister cells are scientifically understood and excepted in the medical community, progress will be made. Again, just my fuzzy way of thinking.