Growing up in rural Pennsylvania, I was often warned by adults to be careful of ticks if I ever played outside. Like so many other children, the main tick-related boogeyman that I was taught to fear was the dreaded Lyme disease. Readily identifiable by the angry red bullseye rash it often leaves on patients, Lyme disease can also cause severe headaches, fever, shooting pains, muscle and joint aches, facial palsy, which is drooping of one or both sides of the face, and nerve pain.
Lyme is also a disease for which — if you're a dog — there is a vaccine. Humans, however, are not so lucky, which raises provocative questions about why we don't have a cure for a disease that, according to some estimates, infects nearly half a million Americans each year. Yet COVID-19 vaccines were developed in less than a year from the virus first came to international attention.
