Unusually aggressive lone star ticks, common in the south-east, are spreading to areas previously too cold for them
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Meat allergy? Unpleasant but ironically good for the environment.
After reading the article I hope they seek out and bite Donald Trump. Wouldn’t that be hilarious if this caused him a meat allergy?
He would starve from hamberder deficiency
McDonalds would have to admit that there’s actually no real fish in a filet o fish.
Unfortunately for this, the Alpha-gal allergy is only in response to mammalian proteins. Fish and birds are fine. Unless the filet o fish is secretly cat.
Not only the environment, the overall Americans health too. Each year, 700 000 Americans are dying from heart diseases.
heart diseases
There’s more than one? Is this like Second Breakfast?
It would be way easier to be a cardiologist if there were only one.
Of course not, next thing you’ll say is that there’s more than one type of cancer!
Yes. Yes it is.
But I’m made of meat!
Vegans:
Honestly, I feel like this is a big fuck you from mother nature, telling us that our industrial farming practices, that are contributing so heavily to climate change, are now worth fuck all. And I am very much not a vegan.
You could join us before the ticks make you :)
I knew they were behind this.
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Ticks can give you fuckers shitty diseases too, so hop off your soapbox buddy.
Yeah, but all ticks can do that. The “meat allergy ones” are a species that is only moving now because of climate change, which in no small part is also caused by emissions from factory farming.
Vegans are so damned annoying. They’re worse than the ticks.
Go eat some carrion, you will fell better
“They will hunt you, they are like a cross between a lentil and a velociraptor,”
Well, that’s a horrifying image.
Took us vegans a long time, but after hours in our labs we finally are ready to roll out our bio weapon.
Damn you, vegans! I’ll see you in hell!
Shakes fist angrily while collapsing from my simultaneous asphyxiation and heart failure.
And prion diseases.
Yes please! They have good music in hell. Also, in heaven there are only Christian Karens, pedophiles and antivax babies, you know how fucking annoying all those screaming babies are. And then complaining Karens on top of that.
Our insect creations acting like over-sized nano-bytes, go forth my children, save the planet.
NOOOOOOOOO!
Yeah we just need to proliferate wild guinea hens and other tick predators to knock their populations down. I’d rather the entire eastern US look like Kauai (random feral poultry) than have ticks take over.
Opossum are native, eat ticks and do not carry rabies. They are heros!
Maybe… but there were so many examples of disastrous consequences for introducing a non native species to control a pest (biological pest control), like thr cane toad in Australia, or ferrets in New Zealand, etc…
“When wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to death”
So when is the government going to deliver my local squadron of tick-squashing gorillas?
Well, the upside is less meat consumption is good for the environment I guess.
One of my friends got hit with this. They will have a violent allergic reaction even if they eat fries cooked in beef fat.
What kind of maniac cooks fries in beef fat?
That sounds like a recipe for cardiac arrest.
Steak n’ Shake
That’s actually extremely common. Belgian fries (the original French fries) are originally cooked in beef fat. But nowadays it’s often a beef/plant based fat mix instead. It’s actually quite hard to find vegan fries in Belgium.
The alt right health grifter sphere is currently obsessed with the evils of “seed oils.” Tallow is supposed to be magically better for you.
A couple of steps away from the raw milk drinkers and the “rebel canners.”
McDonald’s
McDonald’s does, assuming they haven’t changed that recently.
McDonalds’s hasn’t done this in over 30 years. Unless you think 30 years is recent?
I’ve been told that more recently than the 2000s, but I’ll be honest, I didn’t really do much research into it. Sorry that I offended you by being wrong.
McDonald’s stopped using beef tallow for fries in 1990. I suppose that might be relatively recent if you are an elf.
That confirms the maniac assessment. Look at this guy:
Ronald has quite the theme song, too…
The syndrome is not caused by a pathogen but spurs an allergy to a sugar molecule found in mammals and an array of other things, from toothpaste to medical equipment.
Lone star ticks are aggressive and can speedily follow a human target if they detect them. “They will hunt you, they are like a cross between a lentil and a velociraptor,” said Sharon Pitcairn Forsyth, a conservationist who lives in the Washington DC area.
A particular horror is the prospect of brushing up against vegetation containing a massed ball of juvenile lone star ticks, know as a “tick bomb”, that can deliver thousands of tick bites. “They are so tiny you can’t see them but you have to take it seriously or you’ll never get them off you,” said Forsyth, who now carries around a lint roller to remove such clusters.
Many years ago my dog brought in a tic bomb, and got into bed with me. I awoke to my left arm and hand covered in so many sesema seed sized tics I could not even see my skin.
It took hours to get them off me and my dog.
I dodged a bullet cause I didn’t get any illnesses, nor did my dog.
I’m still freaked out though.
Straight nightmare fuel, Jesus Christ mate…
This happened to me once (with deer ticks, not lone star) while I was having a nice walk in the woods high on shrooms. Worst trip of my life.
Why did I read this in bed
I wonder if the tick bomb babies are less likely to transmit anything because they probably haven’t fed on anything yet? I would think they’d have to feed on a mammal to get the compound into their saliva.
😱 😱 😱 !
thats fucking terrifying. imma stay inside
Funny, humanity contributing to the reduction of the climate crisis by increasing the number of ticks causing people to become allergic to meat, meaning less demand for meat, meaning less greenhouse gases being released into the atmosphere as cattle becomes less profitable.
Life, uh, finds a way.
My wife would be fucked unless this take out some preexisting allergies she has (quinoa, buckwheat, hazelnuts, peanuts, eggs and many legumes including soybeans although she doesn’t react to soy lecithin)
I have a soy allergy too and don’t react to lecithin. My understanding is that by the time the soy is processed into lecithin, the “thing” you’re allergic to is pretty much non-existent and that’s why you don’t react to it.
This isn’t the case for all people who are allergic to soy. This is not medical advice.
Thirding this. I develop a rash even after coming into contact with something that had soybean oil on it, but lecithin is safe (for me).
My dog is alergic to a crazy amount of things and eats hydrolyzed food which apparently changes the proteins enough to not react to it.
Blood-sucking ticks that trigger a bizarre allergy to meat in the people they bite are exploding in number and spreading across the US, to the extent that they could cover the entire eastern half of the country and infect millions of people, experts have warned
“We’ve seen an explosive increase in these ticks, which is a concern. I imagine alpha-gal will soon include the entire range of the tick, which could become the entire eastern half of the US as there’s not much to stop them. It seems like an oddity now but we could end up with millions of people with an allergy to meat.”
Alpha-gal is a confounding condition because it doesn’t cause an immediate allergic reaction, unlike a peanut allergy, with symptoms often appearing several hours after consuming meat. The syndrome is not caused by a pathogen but spurs an allergy to a sugar molecule found in mammals and an array of other things, from toothpaste to medical equipment. Researchers think the condition can wane over time but is also worsened by further tick bites.
Dairy, another mammalian product, is also off limits. “I’ve learned what I can eat now, but I was so sad when I realized I couldn’t have pizza again, I remember crying in front of a frozen pizza in the supermarket aisle,” she said.
Lone star ticks are aggressive and can speedily follow a human target if they detect them. “They will hunt you, they are like a cross between a lentil and a velociraptor,” said Sharon Pitcairn Forsyth, a conservationist who lives in the Washington DC area.
A particular horror is the prospect of brushing up against vegetation containing a massed ball of juvenile lone star ticks, know as a “tick bomb”, that can deliver thousands of tick bites. “They are so tiny you can’t see them but you have to take it seriously or you’ll never get them off you,” said Forsyth, who now carries around a lint roller to remove such clusters.
Symptoms can also be alarmingly varied – Forsyth said she rarely eats out now because of concerns of contamination in the food and even that alpha-gal could be carried to her airborne, via the steam of cooked meat.
“Some people are scared to leave the house, it’s hard to avoid,” she said. “Many people who get it are over 50, so the first symptom some of them have is a heart attack.”
The spread of alpha-gal comes amid a barrage of disease threats from different ticks that are fanning out across a rapidly warming US. Powassan virus, which can kill people via an inflammation of the brain, is still rare but is growing, as is Babesia, a parasite that causes severe illnesses. Lyme disease, long a feature of the US north-east, is also burgeoning.
“There’s a tremendous urgency to confront this with new therapies but the problem is we are going backwards in terms of funding and support in the US. There have been cuts to the CDC and NIH (National Institutes of Health) which means there is decreasing support. It’s a major concern.”
Where can you end up, after getting bit by a tick?
i remember crying in front of a frozen pizza in the supermarket aisle
Ticks are evil
My ex ran a very successful barbecue joint in Seattle and Arkansas. She got this and ended up shuttering her business.
Shit, I live in Seattle and love Arkansas barbecue
She used to be at the West Seattle farmer’s market all the time. Girls Gone BBQ.
And now, girl’s gone.
I live in Arkansas and got my first lone star tick this year, thankfully I noticed right as it was biting me. 7 ticks in one month, mostly deer. Insane.
I wish you the best. It’s going to be a rough bunch of decades until we die.
Good. Running a meat restaurant is a monstrous act. No kind person would operate a corpse parlour stuffed with the carcasses of slaves, for people to consume in exchange for money. The disease is forcing her to be a better person.
Go away.
comparing slaves to animals is gross
Well let’s ask Jewish holocaust survivor, Isaac Bashevis Singer, what he thinks.
What do they know-all these scholars, all these philosophers, all the leaders of the world - about such as you? They have convinced themselves that man, the worst transgressor of all the species, is the crown of creation. All other creatures were created merely to provide him with food, pelts, to be tormented, exterminated. In relation to them, all people are Nazis; for the animals it is an eternal Treblinka.
He says people who eat meat are Nazis. I think I trust the opinion of this Jewish holocaust survivor on this matter. He makes a pretty good point. Everyone who eats meat is a Nazi, from the animals’ point of view. And I agree with the animals.
this smacks of a genetic fallacy
but regardless, the Holocaust was wrong, in part, precisely because it did treat humans like animals. this is not an indictment of how we treat animals.
and no animal knows what a Nazi is.
Yes, and that’s the problem with slavery of humans, too. It treats humans the way humanity treats animals. And nobody should be made to endure that kind of suffering.
What makes animals unworthy of decency? Intelligence? Strength? Divine birthright of species? All distinctions drawn between human and animal which aim to excuse slavery are fascist in nature. Singer is right. The only excuses we have for eating meat are the same excuses the Nazis used for the holocaust. Humanity has not grown since 1945. They have not abandoned slavery, nor fascism. As Singer says, every meat eater is a Nazi.
Even the little Hitler Youths in schools being fed meatloaf. What society does to children to indoctrinate them into slave-eating is disgusting. Put blood on their hands, so that without an iron will, they will never be able to accept the truth of what they have done, lest they be overcome with guilt for their crimes. It reminds me of the indoctrination rituals used by criminal gangs, where you have to commit a crime to be accepted. It’s no wonder all these adult Nazis can’t accept that slavery is wrong.
comparing slaves, or Holocaust victims, to animals is gross and you should stop doing that
I’m afraid that no matter what you say, Isaac Bashevis Singer has already said the following:
“In their behavior toward creatures, all men are Nazis. Human beings see oppression vividly when they’re the victims. Otherwise they victimize blindly and without a thought.”
“As often as Herman had witnessed the slaughter of animals and fish, he always had the same thought: in their behaviour towards creatures, all men were Nazis. The smugness with which man could do with other species as he pleased exemplified the most extreme racist theories, the principle that might is right.”
“As long as people will shed the blood of innocent creatures there can be no peace, no liberty, no harmony between people. Slaughter and justice cannot dwell together.”
He has said that the cruelty he experienced at the hands of the Nazis is the same cruelty meat-eaters inflict upon animals. Do you not think he has that right, to interpret his own experiences? Would you descend from heaven to tell him the meaning of the violence he suffered, because you know it better than he? He doesn’t think it’s gross, he thinks it’s true, and I trust him better than you, unless you tell me right now you were in a German concentration camp in 1945.
I see the vegans are escalating their tactics.
We’ll convert the bloodmouths, one way or another! The next plan is mosquitoes that make you allergic to cheese.
The condition, known as alpha-gal syndrome, has proliferated from just a few dozen known cases in 2009 to as many as 450,000 now.
Alpha-gal (galactose-alpha-1,3-galactose) is a sugar molecule found in the cells of all mammals except humans and some primatesWell, at least we can still eat each other, it seems. The rich be lookin’ mighty tasty as of late…
If it were up to me, eating the rich would be considered vegan
Well, they have no soul, no emotion, are not human, and seem to feel no pain.
Dig in.
Forget the alpha male; this is the year of alpha-gal.
Jokes aside does it impact the love of dairy and eggs too?
Dairy, but not eggs. Sufferers can still eat chicken and fish.
And humans and some other primates.
Thank god. I just discovered the magic that is pickled eggs and I refuse to give them up.
Don’t worry. The meat industry will find a cure fast
I know in Arkansas a ton of people have been getting this. I knew a guy that lost nearly 100 pounds after getting it. His diet really changes.
Its all natural Ozempic!
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it can be treated with great success using Chinese medicine.
lol
What’s the treatment?
Several practitioners are having a lot of success testing it as an allergy, which it is. Mods deleted my commment but look it up, I have a family member who practices Chinese medicine and acupuncture in the US and treats people will alpha gal all the time.
My cousin got acupuncture treatments for alpha gal a couple of months ago. She went out for a steak after her last session and wound up in the hospital.
Im sorry to hear that, it’s not a one and done thing, it requires several treatments and a strict avoidance of mammal protein during the treatment. You have to east back into it slowly.
Those naughty mods.
