A fate worse than death:
If you missed it, we've covered this dastardly little bug before in a story about a woman who was bitten, developed an allergy to red meat, but could still eat McDonald's:
The Lone Star Tick is mostly prevalent in the south and eastern U.S., but it has been spreading into the Midwest in recent years and the number of cases of meat allergy due to its bite has SKYROCKETED since 2010.
More than 100,000 people in the U.S. have become allergic to red meat since 2010 because of a weird syndrome triggered by tick bites, according to a government report released Thursday. But health officials believe many more have the problem and don't know it.
BUT WAIT, that's just one report. A second estimate is even worse.
A second report estimated that as many as 450,000 Americans have developed the allergy. That would make it the 10th most common food allergy in the U.S., said Dr. Scott Commins, a University of North Carolina researcher who co-authored both papers published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
So in the last 13 years, nearly half a million Americans may have developed an allergy from a tick that was basically unheard of. Huh.
Here's how it works: When the Lone Star Tick bites you, it injects a sugar known as "alpha-gal" that is also found in all meat from mammals. When the body reacts, it can prime some people's immune systems to react to that same sugar when ingested.
People generally don't get sick right away after eating pork chops, brats, or a steak, but they can get some pretty gnarly hives and gut issues hours after eating. Many go undiagnosed (although 15-20% do recover).
Scientists first noticed this reaction in cancer patients who were taking a drug made in mouse cells that contained the alpha-gal sugar. As it so happens, a number of years later, it started happening through tick bites, and then said tick began spreading across America.
I really try to stay away from conspiracy theories, but it does make me think...
If my first thought was the same as this guy's, then how about the people who really, REALLY, REAAAALLY want us to stop eating meat?
I'm not saying someone engineered this thing that popped up out of nowhere around 2010 at the same time "climate" goals started to be pushed on us...
...I'm just saying that, in a society where governments in nations like Ireland and the Netherlands are killing animals and farmland - reducing their citizens' food supply on purpose - for the sake of warding off the climate apocalypse their cult believes in, you have to wonder what kind of lengths they would actually go to in order to mandate their religion to us all.
I'm just talking out loud, but I could totally see crazies like PETA trying to spread these things.
The president of the U.S. is only calling one thing an "existential threat," after all.
