Our tick nightmare

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Our tick nightmare"

Today, Explained – Vox
Episode Date: July 23, 2026

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Main Theme & Purpose

This episode centers on the growing 'tick nightmare' across the United States. Hosts Sean Rameswaram and Noel King investigate how ticks and tick-borne diseases are rapidly increasing—fueled by climate change, spread among deer populations, and the lack of robust government response. They explore the health threats posed by ticks (including Lyme disease and emerging conditions like Alpha-Gal syndrome), assess why public health efforts are lagging, and dig into the politics and policies behind attempted solutions, with a particular focus on RFK Jr.’s unusual involvement. The episode features in-depth commentary from science writer Jonathan Mingle and CNN medical correspondent Meg Tirrell.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Expanding Threat of Ticks and Tick-Borne Diseases

• Tick-Borne Diseases Are Proliferating:
  • There are numerous tick-borne diseases beyond the well-known Lyme, such as Alpha-Gal syndrome (which causes a red meat allergy), anaplasmosis, babesiosis, and more.
    • [00:00–00:39]
• Symptoms Can Be Severe, Even Deadly:
  • Illness ranges from mild (nausea, vomiting) to serious (seizures, organ failure, death).
    • [00:39] Sean Rameswaram: "Symptoms of all these range from nausea, vomiting and bleeding to seizures, organ failure, facial paralysis, and of course, our old friend death."
• The 'Tick Map' is Spreading:
  • Once-rare tick species (like the Lone Star tick) are showing up in new regions, including places ill-equipped to recognize or treat their diseases.
    • [02:29] Jonathan Mingle: "Some experts I talk to use the word exponential...spreading into areas where people aren't familiar with them, doctors aren't familiar with them."
  • Emergency room visits for tick bites are at their highest levels in nearly a decade.
    • [03:02] Meg Tirrell: "...visits for bites are the highest in nearly a decade as ticks spread into new parts..."
• Climate Change is Making Things Worse:
  • Warmer winters mean ticks are active for longer seasons—even during winter thaws.
    • [03:07] Jonathan Mingle: "Thanks to warmer winters, climate change, ticks are expanding their hunting season...Ticks are out looking for you, waiting for you to walk by and grab on and grab a meal."

2. Personal Stories and Human Cost

• Emerging Dangers—Alpha-Gal Syndrome:

  • Case of Brian Waitzel: died after a tick-triggered red meat allergy (Alpha-Gal).
    • [03:40] Jonathan Mingle: "He had a hamburger at a barbecue, went home to mow his lawn, and a few hours later was unresponsive... He died that night...he had likely been bitten by the Lone Star tick and had developed an allergy..."

• Lyme Disease’s Explosive Growth:

  • About half a million people are treated each year in the US.
    • [03:40–04:36] "...Lyme disease. Each year, about half a million people are treated for Lyme disease. It's the fastest growing vector borne disease in the US. Cases have more than doubled over the past decade."

• Living With Tick Paranoia:

  • [05:37] Jonathan Mingle: "...I have like phantom tick crawling sensations at all hours of the day."

3. A Failed Public Health Response

• Vast Majority of Vector-Borne Illnesses from Ticks—But Focus Still on Mosquitoes:

  • 90% of vector-borne diseases are tick-related, but local public health agencies spend 80% of control budgets on mosquitoes, only around 10–11% on tick control.
    • [06:19–06:46] Jonathan Mingle: "...despite the fact that 90% of cases... from tick bites... 80%... is mosquito control. And about 10 or 11% ... do any kind of tick control."

• Underlying Reasons:

  • Lack of funding, complacency, and “we can’t do much” mindset.
    • [06:46–07:32]

• Comparison to Mosquito Eradication:

  • The CDC was created to fight malaria (via mosquito control), but there’s no equivalent national effort for ticks.
    • [08:03] Historical narration and discussion of the historical CDC focus.

• Role of Deer:

  • Deer populations, now much larger than in past decades, are key drivers of tick spread.
    • [08:22] Jonathan Mingle: “If you want to make a dent in this problem, you have to get to the deer. So the deer are the engine driving a lot of these tick species spread.”

• Why Not Just Hunt Deer?

  • Reducing deer numbers enough to impact ticks is unrealistic; more promising are proposed vaccines for deer or rodents to break the tick lifecycle.
    • [08:49] Jonathan Mingle: "...vaccines that you could deliver to deer or to rodents... so that when the tick bites them, they'll die..."

4. What’s Being Done—And Why It’s Not Enough

• Current Efforts:
  • Small pilot programs and modest NIH funding—no “moonshot.”
    • [25:19] Meg Tirrell: "...million dollar pilot program... up to two and a half million dollars in innovation challenges... but whether it's the moonshot... experts think it leaves something to be desired."
• Consequences of Inaction (Historical Parallels):
  • Recent resurgence of other pests like screwworm due to funding cuts.
    • [11:13] News segment: "At least a dozen animal infections have been confirmed..."
    • [11:21] "...cut the funding... monitoring and containing the screw worm..."

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Politics, Policy, and the RFK Jr. Factor

1. RFK Jr.’s Deep Personal Involvement

• RFK Jr.'s Personal Story:

  • Has had Lyme, pulled 29 ticks off in one day (claims), many of his children have also had Lyme.
    • [16:47–17:27] Meg Tirrell: "It's a really like RFK Jr.-y kind of disease, right?...I remember one day in 1987 when I was stood in my bathtub and picked 29 ticks off myself."

• Connection to the “Ignored Patients” Narrative:

  • Long-suffering Lyme patients feel ignored by the government; RFK Jr. aligns himself with them.
    • [18:20] Patient: "It is an invisible illness. For many years, this agency had a deliberate policy to refuse to engage with the Lyme community."

2. Conspiracies and Vaccine Skepticism

• RFK Jr’s Reputation:
  • Known anti-vaccine activist; frequently pushes conspiracy theories in other domains as well.
    • [18:57] Patient: "COVID 19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and black people... fight radiation opens up your blood brain barrier..."
• How This Relates to Lyme Disease:
  • As HHS Secretary, he’s organized roundtables, promised more research, and improved diagnostics/treatment—but avoids emphasis on vaccines.
    • [19:55] Meg Tirrell: "...What you don't hear him talk about is a vaccine for Lyme disease..."

3. The Lyme Disease Vaccine Story

• History:

  • There was a previous vaccine (Lymrix) about 25 years ago, which was effective but garnered little public or institutional support. Some feared it caused arthritis, FDA investigations refuted this, but lawsuits forced it off the market.
    • [20:38–21:49] Meg Tirrell's historical summary.

• New Vaccine Development:

  • Pfizer now finishing phase 3 trials; regulatory approval pending.
    • [21:49–22:18]

• RFK Jr.’s (and HHS’s) Position:

  • When pressed by Congress, RFK Jr. claimed he’d be the strongest advocate for a Lyme vaccine or treatment—but has not publicly embraced the vaccine approach.
    • [23:07] RFK Jr. (quoted): "There's nobody who will fight harder to find a vaccine or a treatment for Lyme disease than me."
  • HHS declined to clarify its position on the vaccine when asked by Vox.
    • [23:14–23:32] Meg Tirrell: "I wrote back, does that include a vaccine? And they just didn't respond."

• Vaccine Hesitancy Still Exists:

  • Many long-term/chronic Lyme sufferers remain distrustful due to the Lymrix experience.
    • [23:36] Meg Tirrell: "...certain folks who have this chronic Lyme...feel like they were burned by the first vaccine..."

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• [02:29] Jonathan Mingle: "Some experts I talk to use the word exponential. I mean, so what's happening is that some of these tick species are spreading into areas where people aren't familiar with them, doctors aren't familiar with them."
• [03:40] Jonathan Mingle (on lone star tick fatality): "...he had likely been bitten by the Lone Star tick and had developed an allergy to red meat. And so this is referred to as Alpha Gal syndrome."
• [06:46] Jonathan Mingle (on public health priorities): "Despite the fact that 90% of cases...are from tick bites...80% of what they do is mosquito control."
• [08:22] Jonathan Mingle: "If you want to make a dent in this problem, you have to get to the deer. So the deer are the engine driving a lot of these tick species spread."
• [17:17] RFK Jr. (recorded): "I remember one day in 1987 when I stood in my bathtub and picked 29 ticks off myself."
• [23:07] RFK Jr. (confirmation hearing): "There's nobody who will fight harder to find a vaccine or a treatment for Lyme disease than me."
• [26:24] Jonathan Mingle (on prevention): "Doing tick checks. Right. And we do it in my household pretty much daily. When you come home, do a thorough tick check. Throw your clothes in the dryer. Ticks hate heat."

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Notable Timestamps

• 00:00–01:00: Introduction to the breadth of tick-borne illnesses and their dangers.
• 02:13–03:40: Jonathan Mingle on tick expansion, climate change, and Alpha-Gal syndrome.
• 05:38–07:30: Why tick control lags behind mosquito control—history and public health issues.
• 08:22–10:00: Deer’s role in tick spread, and why hunting isn’t the solution.
• 16:17–18:20: Meg Tirrell on RFK Jr.'s personal experience and political focus on Lyme.
• 19:55–22:00: The Lyme vaccine—history, controversy, and what’s new.
• 25:19–26:18: Federal plan to address Lyme and Alpha-Gal—why it may be insufficient.
• 26:24–27:41: Personal prevention strategies.

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Practical Takeaways

• Individual Protection:
  • Daily tick checks, high-heat clothes drying, and use of permethrin-treated clothing or bug spray are the best defenses for now.
• Public Health Needs:
  • The current effort is insufficient relative to the scale and spread of tick-borne diseases. A coordinated, well-funded “moonshot” is lacking.
• The Politics Are Complicated:
  • Even as the threat grows and leaders (like RFK Jr.) claim to prioritize Lyme, solutions like vaccines face ongoing skepticism and political reticence.

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Language, Tone & Style

The tone is urgent, at times darkly humorous, with a focus on storytelling (both scientific and personal). The hosts and guests lean into frustration at systemic inertia and highlight both the weird and deadly aspects of America’s tick problem.

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For Listeners:

If you’re going outside this summer, check yourself and your pets for ticks—and know that while vigilance helps, real solutions will require better public investment and decision-making at all levels.

Transcript

[Host (possibly Sean Ramsaram)]

Every summer we accept that we're gonna get bit by mosquitoes. We bleed, we scratch, we kill, we complain. But in the end we laugh it off and we head towards winter. But ticks are a much more serious concern. Let me just remind you how many tick borne diseases there are. Lyme, you know, shout out to Connecticut. Then there's Alpha Gal syndrome, which can make you allergic to red meat for the rest of your life. Also dairy. But there's so much more. Should we go alphabetical? And I apologize in advance for my pronunciations here.

[Medical or Scientific Expert]

Anaplasmosis Vapesiosis. Urban virus. Holy Tick fever. Erlichitos Heart tick relapsing fever. Heartland virus, Hwasan virus, Rickettsia parkeri Rickettsiosis, Rocky Mountain Spotted fever, Soft tick relapsing fever, starry tularemia, 364d rickettsiosis.

[Host (possibly Sean Ramsaram)]

Symptoms of all these range from nausea, vomiting and bleeding to seizures, organ failure, facial paralysis, and of course, our old friend death. For those of you who are like nbd, that's just a northeast thing. Well, not anymore. Our national tick nightmare on Today, explained from Vox. Support for this show today comes from Anthropic, the team behind Claude. Claude is the AI for minds that don't stop at good enough. It's the collaborator that actually understands your entire workflow and thinks with you. Whether you're debugging code at midnight or strategizing your next business move. Claude extends your thinking to tackle the problems that matter with deep research. Claude's research capabilities go way deeper than basic web search, comprehensive research, reliable analysis with proper citations, turning hours of research into minutes for problems worth solving. You can get started with Claude at Claude AI todayexplained. That's Claude AI todayexplained.

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[Host (possibly Sean Ramsaram)]

Sean Ramsaram today explained covered ticks and Lyme disease on the show way back in 2018, when the word on the trail was that this was getting much worse, we asked science writer Jonathan Mingle, who recently wrote about ticks for the New York, how much worse this has gotten since then.

[Jonathan Mingle (Science Writer)]

You know, some experts I talk to use the word exponential. I mean, so what's happening is that some of these tick species are spreading into areas where people aren't familiar with them, doctors aren't familiar with them.

[Expert or Researcher]

In the last 15 years, the lone Star tick has gone from non existent on the island to fully abundant and everywhere.

[Ad Voiceover / Announcer]

The tick is present in at least 21 states and is rapidly, rapidly spreading

[Narrator or Reporter]

across the eastern US emergency room visits

[Meg Tirrell (CNN Medical Correspondent)]

for bites are the highest in nearly a decade. As ticks spread into new parts of the country.

[Jonathan Mingle (Science Writer)]

Thanks to warmer winters, climate change, ticks are expanding their hunting season. You know, you may have a day that's like 40 degrees in January. Ticks are out looking for you, waiting for you to walk by and grab on and grab a meal.

[Medical or Scientific Expert]

A newborn baby is suspected of contracting a rare tick borne virus.

[Host (possibly Sean Ramsaram)]

It's called Powassan virus.

[Meg Tirrell (CNN Medical Correspondent)]

Lyme's disease has been an ongoing fight on this island. I've had it this morning.

[News Reporter]

A New Jersey man is the first known person to die after a tick bite triggered a severe meat allergy.

[Jonathan Mingle (Science Writer)]

So in 2024, a pilot named Brian Waitzel, father of three in northern New Jersey, he had a hamburger at a barbecue, went home to mow his lawn, and a few hours later was unresponsive on the floor. And he died that night. And his family, you know, was left in shock, of course, you know, trying to figure out why he had died. And it turned out that he had likely been bitten by the Lone Star tick and had developed an allergy to red meat. And so this is referred to as Alpha Gal syndrome. And Alpha Gal syndrome is just the latest entrant into the files of all the many ways in which tick bites can make us sick, and the most familiar one, of course, is Lyme disease. Each year, about half a million people are treated for Lyme disease. It's the fastest growing vector borne disease in the US Cases have more than doubled over the past decade. And those cases are mostly as a result of, of getting bitten by the black legged tick or the deer tick. And the thing is, both of these ticks and many other ticks that are also marching northward and westward and just, you know, expanding their empires rapidly across North America, they can deliver all kinds of pathogens. They're claiming more and more of the map and you're claiming more and more of our psychic map. Right. It's like one of, one of the results of reporting this piece is that I now have like phantom tick crawling sensations at all hours of the day.

[Host (possibly Sean Ramsaram)]

Oh man.

[Jonathan Mingle (Science Writer)]

You know, it's like I've, I tell people I'm, I'm not a tick expert, although I talk to a bunch of them for this story, but I've become a tick expert in, in the sense that I am very familiar with tick paranoia and how it can keep you from venturing out into the places you love. You know, hiking paths or picnic grounds or parks. And so that was part of the story I wanted to write about too is why are we letting the ticks keep us, if not out of these places that we need and love? Why aren't we fighting back?

[Host (possibly Sean Ramsaram)]

And why is it, are we not fighting back against the ticks?

[Jonathan Mingle (Science Writer)]

Not really. I mean, this is one of the surprising takeaways from my reporting is that we're barely even trying. And one way of understanding that you can think about two numbers. So one number is 90%. 90% of vector borne disease cases in the US are from ticks, right?

[Host (possibly Sean Ramsaram)]

90%, yeah.

[Jonathan Mingle (Science Writer)]

And yet, despite the fact that 90% of cases of vector borne illness come from tick bites, if you look at what local, city, county health agencies do in terms of vector control, 80% of what they do is mosquito control. And about 10 or 11% these local health agencies around the country do any kind of tick control. So why is that? You know, it's a familiar story in the public health world. It's not enough funding or policy support for trying out testing, deploying new approaches to controlling ticks even though people are dying. We're just kind of taking for granted that, oh well, what, what can you do? You just tuck your pants in and spray some insecticide on your boots and that's all you can do. It's like. Well, actually, we have a long history of going to war with mosquitoes. Before there was tick control, there was mosquito control. And the CDC was founded with the sole mandate in 1946 of wiping out malaria and fighting mosquitoes.

[Historical Narrator or Documentary Voice]

Scientific information on the subject is discussed and analyzed. Decisions are made. And one of these is to design more effective equipment to combat the dreaded mosquito.

[Host (possibly Sean Ramsaram)]

I did not know that.

[Jonathan Mingle (Science Writer)]

Yeah, I didn't know it either.

[Host (possibly Sean Ramsaram)]

It feels like they lost that fight

[Interviewer or Co-host]

because in my neighborhood you can't go out between the hours of 7 and 9 o'. Clock.

[Jonathan Mingle (Science Writer)]

Yeah, the mosquitoes haven't gone away, but malaria did for the most part. You know, in talking to experts today, they told me that, including folks at the cdc, like, there's a suite of tools we could be using if we wanted to get serious about fighting ticks. As one veteran tick expert at the CDC told me, if. If you want to make a dent in this problem, you have to get to the deer. So the deer are the engine driving a lot of these tick species spread. And we just have way more deer than we did decades ago, especially, you know, in the eastern U.S. and suburban parts of America. So how do you get to the deer? You know, I had people in the comments section of my piece saying the, the clear answer is just we should all be hunting deer. But in talking to the experts, they'll tell you it's not really a feasible solution. You would have to knock deer populations way down to make a dent in the tick populations. What is more promising is kind of a combined approach of stuff like vaccines. You know, there are people developing vaccines that you could deliver to deer or to rodents, which are another important host for these ticks, so that when the tick bites them, they'll die. That I learned from talking to folks who do this kind of research for a living is a more promising avenue for controlling ticks than all of us picking up crossbows and becoming deer hunters. You know, what I heard from experts is that we're not even funding this research in a serious way. We do this stuff for mosquitoes. People don't realize it, but your local county health agency, they go out and they find where the mosquito breeding grounds are and stagnant pools of water, and they, they treat it and it takes this sustained, quiet effort. You know, it's like we saw the consequences of not doing that recently. You know, this is a bit tangential, but screwworm, you know, screwworm was this flesh eating larval pest that devastates cattle herds. And it was eradicated in the US in 1966. And it was kept at bay by the vigilance of people at USDA and USAID who ran these programs, you know, to release millions of sterile screw worm males, you know, out of airplanes. And it created this wall that kept it from coming into the southern US and now they're here.

[News Reporter]

Since the beginning of June, at least a dozen animal infections have been confirmed in Texas and New Mexico, putting California and the rest of the nation on alert.

[Historical Narrator or Documentary Voice]

His Department of Government Efficiency, run by Elon Musk, decided to cut the funding. And that was specifically dedicated to monitoring and containing the screw worm in Central America.

[Jonathan Mingle (Science Writer)]

And probably if we stopped doing the mosquito control. You know, at a local scale, we'd see more cases of dengue fever, West Nile virus, all these other rare but serious illnesses that climate change is making more of a threat. Here in the US.

[Host (possibly Sean Ramsaram)]

Jonathan Mingle wrote, we're living in a tick nightmare. It's time to go to war for the New York Times. The guy with the power to go to war is named Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. And one of the kind of curious things about him is he he's kind of obsessed with Lyme disease. More on that puzzle when Today Explained continues. Support for the show today comes from Anthropic. In case you were wondering who's behind Claude, that's anthropic. Claude is the AI for minds that don't stop it. Good enough is that you? It's the collaborator that actually understands your entire workflow and thinks with you. Have you been looking for that? Whether you're debugging code at midnight or strategizing your next business move, Claude extends your thinking to tackle the problems that matter with deep research. Claude's research capabilities go way deeper than basic web search. Comprehensive, reliable analysis with proper citations turning hours of research into minutes. We love a proper citation, don't we? Plus, you can connect Claude to your professional tools like GitHub, Jira, HubSpot, Notion, Google Workspace and watch it become your command center with context from all your work. That means Claude has context from your calendar, emails and all of your Go to tools for problems worth solving. Get started with Claude AI todayexplained that's Claude AI todayexplained.

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[Historical Narrator or Documentary Voice]

Today.

[Meg Tirrell (CNN Medical Correspondent)]

Explained. Hi, I'm Meg Tirrell. I am a medical correspondent at cnn.

[Ad Voiceover]

Okay.

[Interviewer or Co-host]

We just spent half the show talking about Lyme disease and how the government's not doing enough to combat it. But earlier this year, our Health and Human Services Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy II, pledged to fight Lyme disease. What is RFK Jr. S relationship to Lyme?

[Meg Tirrell (CNN Medical Correspondent)]

Oh, wow. RFK Jr's Lyme story goes way back.

[Interviewer or Co-host]

Whoa.

[Meg Tirrell (CNN Medical Correspondent)]

Yeah. Well, I mean, it's a really like RFK Jr. Y kind of disease, right? Because he's a falconer, he talks a lot about his work with birds of prey. He goes into the woods a lot. He posts lots of photos of himself in nature. And when you start to pay attention to RFK Jr. And Lyme disease, which I have been doing, he starts to tell the same story a few times. It involves him in a bathtub in the 1980s.

[Patient or Lyme Disease Advocate]

I remember one day in 1987 when I was stood in my bathtub and picked 29 ticks off myself.

[Meg Tirrell (CNN Medical Correspondent)]

He says he did at one point get Lyme disease. He got the classic bullseye rash on his forearm. He says he took antibiotics and it was cured. But he also describes his, you know, most of his children have had Lyme disease, some with pretty severe effects of Lyme disease. So, you know, he's very focused on it. You know, it also ticks like some other RFK junior boxes where there is this community of people who feels like they've been neglected and ignored and in his wor gaslit, particularly by the federal government. And those are people who have like chronic Lyme disease or long Lyme disease. So this is Lyme disease that hasn't been cured by antibiotics and that people have been living with these symptoms for a really long period of time. And so he's trying to address that population of people. He had a roundtable discussion with a lot of those patients, patient advocates as well as doctors and people who are trying to work on this space.

[Patient or Lyme Disease Advocate]

It is an invisible illness. For many years, this agency had a deliberate policy to refuse to engage with the Lyme community.

[Meg Tirrell (CNN Medical Correspondent)]

And so, you know, he's really speaking to, to that group of people. But at the same time, like, Lyme disease is a growing problem for, you know, anybody who lives in a tick infested area, which is so many of us.

[Interviewer or Co-host]

So it sounds like people who have Lyme disease have an ally in the secretary of health and human services. And you know, of course, RFK Jr's known to spin up conspiracy theories, peddle falsehoods.

[Patient or Lyme Disease Advocate]

COVID 19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and black people. High fight radiation opens up your blood brain barrier, and so all these toxins that are in your body can now go into your brain.

[Interviewer or Co-host]

Not a fan of vaccines. Does any of that get into the Lyme disease mix?

[Meg Tirrell (CNN Medical Correspondent)]

Well, I mean, so he convened this roundtable and it had it, you know, it had doctors, it had lawmakers, and so you had these folks speaking around the table about different things that you could do.

[Medical or Scientific Expert]

The Lyme clinical trials network is designed to build evidence for repurposing medicines and other treatments so we can improve the lives of people suffering.

[Meg Tirrell (CNN Medical Correspondent)]

Now, one of the things that RFK Jr. Is really focused on is improving diagnostics and improving treatment.

[Narrator or Reporter]

There's investments we've made in identifying new antibiotics that potentially could have a longer, longer better effects, as well as potentially protective monoclonal antibodies that can be used as a treatment strategy.

[Meg Tirrell (CNN Medical Correspondent)]

What you don't hear him talk about is a vaccine for Lyme disease. And you know, he talks about things like, we've got to make it safer for kids to go back in the woods. You know, vaccine could be one way of Doing that. And we actually have a vaccine now that is approaching the regulatory approval process from Pfizer. You know, they reported phase three results. They said they were going to take this to regulatory agencies. And so that was earlier this year I became interested in, okay, well, RFK Jr. Is a big proponent of solutions for Lyme disease. Is he gonna be supportive of this vaccine? Will this be the vaccine that RFK Jr sort of, you know, wins him over?

[Interviewer or Co-host]

Tell us a bit more about the history of Lyme disease vaccines, because they've been trying for some time, to my recollection.

[Meg Tirrell (CNN Medical Correspondent)]

So there actually was an approved Lyme disease vaccine. It was called Limericks. It was brought to market by GSK, the huge British drug maker. This is about 20, 25ish years ago. And, you know, it worked. It was something like 70 or 80% effective at reducing your risk of getting Lyme disease. But it had kind of this, like, tepid endorsement from the federal vaccine agencies. So the FDA kind of gave it a. It wasn't like the. The most like, extreme endorsement, I guess you could say. The way people described it to me, they noted it was just for specific age groups. And then the CDC's group of vaccine advisors, they essentially recommended it for people who might have exposure to ticks. You know, you might consider this. So it wasn't like, a strong endorsement that, like, everybody should get this vaccine. And so what we saw was that when it hit the market, the sales were, like, really tepid. And then some people thought that the vaccine was actually giving them arthritis. And so this is the kind of thing you're trying to prevent you from getting Lyme disease. You're trying to prevent getting arthritis. The FDA looked into this extensively. Researchers looked at this.

[Historical Narrator or Documentary Voice]

This.

[Meg Tirrell (CNN Medical Correspondent)]

The signal did not play out from the conversations I've had with experts about it. But, you know, there were lawsuits that were filed. Ultimately, GSK just decided to pull the vaccine off the market. So now you have, like, 20 years later, Pfizer coming back with this vaccine. So this is approaching regulatory agencies. We might get the slime disease vaccine and, you know, have to see how RFK junior's HHS would receive that.

[Interviewer or Co-host]

What's the vibe from HHS and RFK junior? I mean, he cares about Lyme disease. He thinks there's this forgotten population of people with chronic Lyme disease. He's in charge. He's got an incredible amount of power to do something about it. And here's this vaccine that could be the easy solution. Is it like a match made in tick heaven?

[Meg Tirrell (CNN Medical Correspondent)]

Well, tick hell Preventing the ticks from being able to give us Lyme disease. Although I don't think they care if they give us Lyme disease. They just wanna drink our blood. But, you know, Kennedy was asked during his confirmation hearing by Susan Collins, Cuz, Maine, of course, is very hard hit by Lyme disease whether he would support a Lyme disease vaccine. And he told her, quote, there's nobody

[Patient or Lyme Disease Advocate]

who will fight harder to find a vaccine or a treatment for Lyme disease than me.

[Meg Tirrell (CNN Medical Correspondent)]

Now I reached back out to HHS when I wrote this story back in March about Pfizer's Lyme vaccine application. And a spokesperson for HHS told me, hhs supports rigorous gold standard science to better understand, prevent and treat Lyme disease. So I wrote back, does that include a vaccine? And they just didn't respond.

[Interviewer or Co-host]

Why, why are they being cagey about this vaccine? It feels like a golden opportunity for

[Meg Tirrell (CNN Medical Correspondent)]

them, you would think. And it's interesting, you know, I've reached out to other folks who are sort of in this, this realm and most of them, like, are very supportive of a vaccine. Like, it's, it's something that they would like to have as part of the toolkit. I will say there is one population that is skeptical of a vaccine and that is certain folks who have this chronic Lyme who live with long Lyme disease, they feel like they were burned by the first vaccine. They still believe that there were safety problems with that vaccine. At least some, some port. This group who I spoke with, and so they are, they're nervous about it, but you know, other people really want a vaccine.

[Interviewer or Co-host]

Where does it leave us? Ultimately you think, like, is this a time to feel hopeful that there are solutions that are like, you know, incoming here as these ticks become more and more just like a concern every summer across this country, or is it a time to feel ultimately fearful?

[Meg Tirrell (CNN Medical Correspondent)]

Well, I mean, it definitely feels like we're in a time with this like massive upsurge in ticks. You know, they're all around, they're spreading out, they're spreading new, newly discovered pathogens. So it definitely doesn't feel like we're on the down trend of that by any means. And the government has, has put out a plan to try to at least address Lyme disease and to an extent, alpha gal. But it's not perceived from people I've spoken with to be enough. It's not a moonshot, you know, by any means to address these kinds of things.

[Interviewer or Co-host]

What's the plan?

[Meg Tirrell (CNN Medical Correspondent)]

Yeah, so this came out in May. They call it a sweeping plan to combat Lyme disease and advanced treatment. So you might expect like, you know, huge amounts of money being poured into this, like big research consortiums working with the industry. The details are less, less sort of powerful than that from what we see in the release that HHS put out. They say the actions include a multimillion dollar pilot program focused on tick control, up to two and a half million dollars in innovation challenges, funding for NIH researchers to combat Alpha Gal syndrome, and a public private collaboration to help patients connect with experienced providers. So I think people are glad that there is focus on this. But yeah, whether it's the moonshot that is needed, especially with the backdrop of like, broader cuts to science funding, I think experts in the space think it leaves something to be desired.

[Host (possibly Sean Ramsaram)]

Bummer. But in the meantime, what do you do if you're going camping this weekend, Jonathan?

[Jonathan Mingle (Science Writer)]

Doing tick checks. Right. And we do it in my household pretty much daily. When you come home, do a thorough tick check. Throw your clothes in the dryer. Ticks hate heat. And some people like to use permethrin, you know, spray this insecticide that's designed to kill ticks on your boots or your pants when you go out for a hike. So there are things that, I mean, for decades researchers have known these things are really effective if you keep doing them, if you stay vigilant. Right. And all it takes is that one time, that one time you go out for a hike and you come back and you forget to do the tick check. So, you know, we need those kind of personal measures of vigilance and protection, but we still need to kind of push for a bigger public health response to this because the ticks are going to keep, they're going to keep spreading and they're going to keep spreading into the calendar too, in the sense that as winters get warmer, more and more days of the year when you're outdoors, you're going to encounter ticks who are hungry and they're looking for you.

[Host (possibly Sean Ramsaram)]

Thanks, Jonathan. And thanks, Meg. And thanks Danielle Hewitt for producing the show today. Aman Al Saadi for editing, Gabriel Duntov for fact checking, and Patrick Boyd for flying solo. Be careful out there, friends.

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