It sounds like the premise of an unoriginal horror film: Human beings meddle with the environment to satisfy their own greed, and accidentally unleash a scourge of disgusting bloodsucking arachnids. Those bugs, once benign, now carry a rare and frequently fatal virus. Even worse, there are more of them than anyone expected.
If you read a new report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), you would be forgiven for seeing the movie adaptation potential. Scientists who collected ticks from Pennsylvania's Lawrence Township Recreational Park found that 92 percent of the 25 arachnids tested positive for deer-tick virus (DTV). It is a strain of the potentially fatal Powassan virus, which in mild cases leads to headaches, vomiting and fevers. In more severe cases, victims develop neurological complications like meningitis and encephalitis; half of the survivors of those neuroinvasive cases have long-term health problems, and 10 percent die — which is five to ten times the mortality rate for COVID-19. There are no treatments for the disease, and it can be transmitted within 15 minutes of a tick's bite.
