My aim in posting here was simply to reinforce the message about Lyme disease so that more people become aware. I don't intend getting into personal arguments, but I just thought that Doc's response didn't do anything to further the cause and provided no explanation for us to consider. If it had been differently worded then I wouldn't have responded as I did.
That aside, I understand that a pharmaceutical company will be holding a tick awareness month this year, though the suggestion is that it will be aimed at vets and/or the medical profession.....not the public. We'll have to wait and see.
What concerns me about the intended market is that some of those professions
need to be made aware. (Why aren't they already 'aware'?). What drugs/treatment the pharm. co. will be selling and whether it's anything new, I have no idea. But they must regard it as being worthwhile for their interests, unless their intention is purely charitable. For it to be worthwhile, there must be enough cases to justify the expense, or perhaps the 'treatment' is expensive? The BADA site reckons that 3,000 people get Lyme's each year - that's 8 a day.
I don't know and I'm not here to judge. My intention is simply to make more people aware of Lyme disease, what to look out for, how to remove ticks safely and how to get proper & timely treatment if necessary.
There are a lot of notions in people's minds: I have been asked where I went to in Dorset to have caught Lyme's!! Well, I haven't been there for many years and the tick I got was 'local', LOL! It may be that many years ago Lyme's was confined to that area, but the spread of host animals (particularly deer) has meant that it is much wider.
I now have a poster in my car and display 2 in the side windows when parking at our local country park which is visted by people from many miles away - a visiting Spanish family were there yesterday. I've run off some cards to try to get people to visit the relevant page on my website and at BADA. I will be handing them out at all the shoots I attend as well as to all the dog-walkers I meet.
The mother of a gamekeeper friend has been very ill through Lyme's. I don't suppose she will mind handing out some cards either and I will run off 'posters' for any of my beating collegues if they want to put them in their cars. Some of the beaters I meet go beating at shoots that I don't attend, so I hope they may take some cards with them and distribute them.
The document (a label template) I use has a slight problem in that a blank page follows the complete one and I can't find out how to delete it/the info on it. Once I can, I will put it on my website for people to download and print if they wish. Cut out the cards and distribute......and we can all make people more aware of this horrible disease and how to reduce the risks or prevent it.
Stickler
PS. there's now a PDF file available from
http://www.shootpics.co.uk/lyme_disease.html - just go the foot of the page and click the link on the right for 'save & print the shootpics tick cards'.