MAGA my ass. Look at this map Fauci made-- Leading the world in dreaded diseases...

[BGBD]

12. The thing that scares me most on that list isn't coronavirus...

It's heartland virus. It's just one of many tick-borne illnesses that we are seeing emerge and spread in geography in the United States right now. Climate change is a very likely factor in this. All of these diseases are very, very bad. Lyme disease is the most famous example and the most prevalent but also the least severe. It can still cause very bad illness that can become chronic and debilitating without prompt treatment.

Most of these are bacterial that can be treated with doxycycline but some are viruses that can't be.

Another emerging disease that worries me a lot if Hantavirus. It's concentrated mostly in the four corners region, but also in other parts of the West. There have been cases in the East as well though. I believe with climate change both of these problems will increase in the US.

Ticks are a vector for the former diseases but are not part of the Hantavirus chain. However, new world mice are probably the reservoir for all of it. Ticks go through stages of growth and need a blood feeding during each. Newly born ticks (larva) that bite humans don't spread disease, it's the later feedings, after having fed off a deer mouse for example, that they infect humans with these types of things. Deer mice are also known sources of hantavirus.

It would be worthwhile to invest in a serious effort to reduce the spread and populations of new world mice in the wild.