Image source: portagecounty-oh.gov
Many people question if Lyme disease was created in a U.S. research lab known as Plum island, where their lead researcher was a former NAZI. A literal Nazi, Erich Traub a Nazi bioweapons specialist. https://www.bionity.com/en/encyclopedia/Erich_Traub.html . Lyme disease was first observed as spreading in nearby Lyme, Connecticut in 1975. The disease was "discovered" in 1982, and named after one of Plum Island's researchers, Willy Burgdorfer who found it. The distance between the two places is about 17 miles. Was a sample of the disease sent to Plum island, or did it escape, or something else?
There are books or conspiracies that the Nazi's considered dropping poisoned ticks on populations and various confessions. see http://www.news.cn/english/2021-08/25/c_1310146419.htm , https://thehumanist.com/magazine/july-august-2019/arts_entertainment/bitten-the-secret-history-of-lyme-disease-and-biological-weapons/ . The draw back to these claims, is that Lyme disease had been found in animals preserved from the 19th century. https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.1006.1026&rep=rep1&type=pdf , reportedly white mice hosted the disease at a 1% rate (remember that number). And is possibly much much older, https://today.oregonstate.edu/archives/2014/may/amber-discovery-indicates-lyme-disease-older-human-race . That may be enough for the ministry and truth and the blue check marks to label this lab creative narrative as fake news, but still there is plenty of room for inquiry such as were they were exact matches, was the detection through multiple rounds of PCR testing, were the ticks/mice themselves modified to live longer, etc. Many of us older folks remember being able to lie down and look up at the clouds on the soft green grass, without a worry in the world about ticks. As the youths today chant Global warming as the cause of everything, they'll never know the importance of how good it used to be. Today ticks and Lyme disease are everywhere. And if they were so worrisome in the past, surely they would be plenty of old wives tales surviving to this date on how best to protect ourselves.
Instead the spread of Lyme disease and ticks have been blamed on global warming, deer populations, forestry management, etc. One Harvard paper suggest that deer do not carry Lyme disease, but deer are important to the deer tick's life cycle. https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/features/kiling-deer-not-answer-reducing-lyme-disease-html/ . see also https://www.pgc.pa.gov/Wildlife/Wildlife-RelatedDiseases/Pages/LymeDisease.aspx ("deer do not act as reservoirs for the Lyme bacteria"). That even a reduction in 75% of the deer population didn't lower the tick population. If global warming was real, those advocating the theories wouldn't be buying up coastal properties, but buying up rural parts on Canada. Look at all the regions in Canada projected in 2080 to have growing zones of 5-8....with greater sunlight hours in the summer. In 60 years grow edible Bananas in Ontario! Nonetheless, the 1894 Cape Cod mouse undermines the global warming theory.
There is something else that needs to be said. The greatest concentration of lyme disease carrying ticks are in wooded areas which have been invaded by invasive species. https://parasitesandvectors.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13071-018-2623-0 . True there are more ticks in normal woodlands. I think the primary candidate, and there may be plants with similar traits, are the multiflora rose. These beasts can produce up to a million seeds a year which are viable for 20 years, and also spreads by rhyzomes. The claim is they can grow 15-20 feet tall, but I pulled some out of trees that must have been at least 30 feet tall. I think generally, a single node, has a 12-14 foot diameter in grows in every direction with razor sharp thorns. It's not as easy as using a chain saw to remove them, they have woody thorny branches, with thorny vines.
You might be able to use heavy equipment and dig them up. Absent that, odds are to cut a full grown specimen down, you will have to prune the vines back first, cut down a bunch of branches, before you can get close enough to a node. Of, once you cut down a root node, you have to either dig up the root, keep cutting new growth until it dies, or go full Monsanto on the stumps. Have fun!
What do you do after you cut them down?
And there might be multiple nodes in the area. They are for the most part impenetrable. They were reportedly introduced to this country as root stock to grow roses on. Root stock and scions are often grafted together to produce desirable trees, and shrubs. For example a root that is resistant to diseases, or a root that only supports a limited height, to be attached to a flavorful apple. But it got worse. Out own government promoted it, giving out rhizomes to grow the roses to feed wild animals with their hips, to give farmers impenetrable living walls, and to create crash buffers along road side. The crisis was recognized by 1960 as they were taking over farmlands. https://www.ecolandscaping.org/07/landscape-challenges/invasive-plants/multiflora-rose-an-exotic-invasive-plant-fact-sheet/ . Yet in 1948, they were advertised to be easy to control. https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/62793736.pdf
I also remember hearing a study that tick populations are correlated to the production of acorns. So I wondered what would happen if the oak trees were removed from a population. California has an anomaly/disease called sudden oak death[SOD], and studies were performed in regards to the population of lyme infected ticks, mice, wood rats (a major lyme disease host there), and a specific type of lizard. Surprisingly, a [California] forest with SOD had MORE tick nymphs, more mice, more Lizards, but less wood rats. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3074061/ than a healthy forest. Moreover, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3413889/ found the higher the lizard population, and the lower the wood rat population, the lower the rate of Lyme infected nymphs. The biggest factor in limiting Lyme disease was the lizard population who both ate ticks and provided a blood meal. Lizards are possibly immune to Lyme disease, so they don't infect the nymphs nor are infected by them. Other writers have noted that Lyme disease is lower in the south than the north east, because ticks in the south prefer to prey upon lizards. https://www.science.org/content/article/lizards-may-be-protecting-people-lyme-disease-southeastern-united-states While in New England there is only one type of Lizard; a Skink that lives in vermont.
Whatever is happening in the north east in the last 40+ years, is unlikely related to the lizard population. Maybe someone could argue a decline of snakes, or frogs, or other animals unlikely to host Lyme disease to increase the spread of Lyme disease, and I would think that might be part of a rational explanation. The rate of Lyme disease in a tick population seems to correlate with what they are feasting on, at least as suggested by the California SOD studies. I think invasive species, especially the multiflora rose, aren't just choking out native plant species, but they are choking out food sources for animals, they are choking out animal habitats, and they are choking out where all an animal can travel. What can easily penetrate these bushes are small little rodents and birds. Both of whom can host Lyme disease. I think it is highly likely that a bird will eat a tick faster than a tick will make a blood meal out of a bird, but birds have nonetheless became part of the debate on the spread of Lyme disease because they can carry the disease large distances-especially during migration. If the ticks hiding in the thicket, eat 3 times in their lives, are eating almost exclusively on mice with a high concentration of Lyme disease, then the ticks not only will have a greater chance of getting Lyme disease, but they also carry a good chance of spreading Lyme disease to non-infected mice effectively amplifying the percentage of mice with Lyme disease, which then amplifies the number of ticks with Lyme disease, into a spiral that keeps getting worse and worse. Remember the study of Lyme disease found in old preserved mice with just a 1% prevalence? One recent study found 15 out of 17 white footed mice carry the disease.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC269256/ . The washington post says 40-90% of white footed mice carry the disease. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/why-you-need-to-know-about-mice-ticks-warm-temperatures-and-lyme-disease/2017/06/16/cd7a4ab8-4aef-11e7-9669-250d0b15f83b_story.html . And what eats the rose hips of multiflora roses (besides birds)? White footed Mice (important host) and deer (part of the life cycle). https://www.illinoiswildflowers.info/weeds/plants/multiflora_rose.htm . Effectively they are drawing animals important to the the Tick/Lyme disease life cycle to them.
So whatever the blue checkmarks would say defending the reputation of our government, the Lyme disease situation today is a lot difference than it was 130 years ago. If we suppose the DNA of the mice, the disease, or the ticks, haven't changes substantially to support the Plum island theory, then the answer is obviously elsewhere. I personally don't know if the DNA has changed, but there are certainly people above my pay grade with the money, skills, access to equipment, and access to specimen, who could find out. Nonetheless, It was found on a mouse specimen from 1894, which undermined the claim of global warming. I am left to believe that our government's past love of the multiflora rose have substantially altered the natural availability of the ticks diet. One that left it focused essentially on a feeding frenzy of a host that was already a carrier of Lyme disease, and an attractant to everything Lyme disease needs to proliferate.
It is still possible birds help spread the disease, but they had some 15 million years to do that. If Birds did help spread it in more recent times to the degree that we have seen, it would be likely that the probability of them being able to do so increased significantly-so its not just the birds. There may be a lot of small factors including the birds, but I think the primary culprit are the roses.