Speaking of ticks...

Sort of a spin-off of Psilociraptor's post. Why aren't there more efforts to control the tick population? Every report is saying that the tick population will explode this year. It seems to me that more of an effort to control the tick population would be logical.

I'm not saying we should just start spraying chemicals from trucks and planes, like we did in the old days. But it seems to me that in endemic areas, they should be able to set out some kind of bait for deer and mice (at least) so that when they eat it, it doesn't kill the mice or deer, but will kill any ticks that feed off of them. Kind of like the medications they make now for dogs and cats.

Of course, we need to develop and research better and new tests and treatments, but it seems like this would be fairly simple to do in the meantime. And I don't see a way the CDC can come up with to oppose it.

Maybe because the government wants things just the way they are???? That would be my guess. It sure isn't making an effort to oversea the criminal negligence on the part of the CDC.

mm57553 said...

Psilociraptor said...
Don't know if this hurts beneficial insects https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21725837

But I'm not talking about spraying anything. I'm talking about baits that the animals eat. The only insects that would be harmed would be the ones that bite the animals, like ticks, lice, etc. Hope that makes sense.

I know you said no to spraying chemicals, but this is a fungus. More like adding a tick predator back into the ecosystem. Even baiting them with synthetics isn't ideal as it will end up back in the ecosystem one way or another. I guess nothing is ideal at this point, but i feel as a general principle the idea of adding back species diversity and predators is more appealing than linear killing approaches in the long haul as it serves to restore the natural dynamic. But of course we're not gods and that might go wrong. I just thought it was a very interesting approach

I just don't see why we can't have mice, deer, etc. ingest the same or similar medicines that dogs and cats already do. No harm to the host, just kills the ticks.

sebreg, good point but in this case the predator would be a parasitic fungi so habitat fragmentation would be less of an issue. If we were talking about macroscopic predators or rodent predators that's a whole new issue. Of course reestablishing balance would require addressing this on all of those levels. I agree on the ick factor. Humans just don't know enough about these things no matter what silly lies we tell ourselves. But it's complicated because on one hand you have the urge to do something immediately, and on the other hand the thing you're doing is the very mentality that engendered the problem in the first place (ie wreckless reengineering of biological systems).

mm57554 - i'm not saying your idea is wrong. this is a huge game of measuring risks vs rewards. i will say though that i have a terrible time trying to find cat/dog medication that isn't toxic to them. this would certainly be the lesser of evils versus spraying but i just don't trust myself as a mere human to say that it's not going to have some long term impact that's going to worsen the issue. what's going to happen when all that premethrin washes off the animals fur in the rain and goes down to the streams and piles up in the soils. what's it going to do to insect life and microbiome that natural systems depend on. what's it going to do to other organisms. what if the spread of borrelia is out-competing some other fatal disease causing pathogen. maybe in the grand scheme of things it's a small price to pay i don't know. but humans have a track record of making a mess out of this sort of stuff