I’ve got some great news, bros. Soon, we won’t have to worry about getting nuked by Iran or North Korea because we’ll already be dead thanks to the Asian longhorned tick.
It’s the first new breed of tick to come to America in over 50 years and it’s carrying some deadly diseases. The Asian longhorned tick also looks pretty dang terrifying, as is the case with most ticks.
The females also don’t need males to reproduce and they lay hundreds of eggs by themselves and these ticks are complete gluttons. They’ll gorge themselves on blood until they blow up to look like a deformed/engorged raisin.
If you’re on the West Coast then you’re probably pretty chill, for now. The tick has already been spotted in seven states including Arkansas, North Carolina, New York, Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. It’s actually been seen in New Jersey since 2013 so this seems like an epidemic we can all blame America’s armpit for.
How nasty/deadly is the Asian longhorned tick? Well, it carries a virus that has a mortality rate of up to 30%. This means that one of the viruses being spread by this tick causes death in 30% of the mammals it bites and transmits that virus to.
The Asian longhorned tick got a lengthy and horrifying feature in the New York Times yesterday that pretty much sent the Internet into a panic, and rightfully so. Let’s check out some excerpts, shall we?
Tadhgh Rainey, an entomologist at the public health department of Hunterdon County, N.J., found the first long-horned ticks in the country last August, when a woman who had been shearing her pet Icelandic sheep came to his department with ticks on her hands and wrists.
“I thought she’d have a few,” Mr. Rainey said in an interview. “But she was covered in them, easily over 1,000 on her pants alone.” (via)
There’s a lot to unpack here. I’m pretty intrigued by someone in New Jersey keeping Icelandic sheep as pets because I thought the sheep where like Icelandic horses where they didn’t export them. I guess I was wrong…Also, ONE THOUSAND TICKS on her pants?! What in the actual fuck???
In East Asia, long-horned ticks do carry pathogens related to Lyme and others found in North America. But the biggest threat is a phlebovirus that causes S.F.T.S., for severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome. (Thrombocytopenia means abnormally low levels of platelets, which help the blood clot; a severe drop triggers internal bleeding and organ failure.)
The syndrome has an overall fatality rate of about 15 percent, said Terry A. Klein, an entomologist working with the American military in South Korea. But S.F.T.S. is more lethal to people aged 60 or older, killing half of them. (via)
NOOOOOOOOOOPE:
Long-horned ticks are spreading across the U.S. — and carrying lethal disease with them pic.twitter.com/DcI9dR2R8x
— NowThis Impact (@nowthisimpact) August 8, 2018
50% of people over the age of 60 die from this disease?!? If this makes its way to the state of Florida it could be wiped out overnight.
The NYT article closes by saying that ‘the jury is still out’ on how big of a threat this tick is in America because only a small percentage of the ticks carry these deadly diseases.
Am I crazy for thinking that we should maybe be looking into ways to eradicate all ticks from America?
I’ve never heard of a single reason ticks should exist. They’re awful creatures. Hideous to look at. All they do is suck blood and spread disease.
Shouldn’t we be looking for a way to wipe out ticks forever instead of pondering whether or not they’re a major threat?