The Diagnostic Gap

Reading through all this government and research material, one thing keeps jumping out: the real number of people getting sick from ticks is almost certainly higher than what gets counted.

Lyme tests just aren't great early on, right when treatment actually does the most good. Back in 2022 the official rules for counting a Lyme case changed so a positive lab test alone counts, you don't need a doctor to also confirm it clinically. That change is a big reason the reported numbers jumped. It's not that more people suddenly got sick, it's that we got better at counting the people who already were.

Alpha-gal has its own problem, plenty of doctors just don't recognize it when they see it, which I get into on the alpha-gal page. Powassan slips through the cracks too because a lot of cases are mild or show no symptoms at all, so nobody ever connects it back to a tick bite. And Rocky Mountain spotted fever sometimes gets caught late because the rash doesn't always show up right away, and that disease can move fast once it gets going.

Bottom line, the actual amount of tick-borne sickness out there is almost certainly bigger than what shows up in the official numbers. The CDC can only count what gets diagnosed and reported. It can't count what's actually happening out there that nobody's caught yet.