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Aurornistoday at 4:46 PM0 repliesview on HN

There is a long, sad history here. Lyme disease is a popular topic into alternative medicine as an explanation for unexplained symptoms. There is a belief in these communities that the standard tests for Lyme disease are not accurate, so people diagnose themselves by vague symptoms like feeling tired or having headaches. It’s a sad situation where people who aren’t finding an explanation for their symptoms get drawn into forums or Facebook groups where groups of people confidently tell them that their symptoms sound like Chronic Lyme Disease and that normal doctors can’t help them.

This has created an intense fear of Lyme disease among people who don’t trust doctors and “do their own research”. That group overlaps a lot with anti-vax groups. You can see where this is going. Some people who got the Lyme vaccine because they saw it as the lesser of two evils and then subsequently had medical issues blamed everything on the vaccine, and it blew up into lawsuits and a belief that the vaccine causes these problems. If there was any real problem we’ll never know because the storm was such a mess that it made actual research impossible and scared so many people away from the vaccine that it was withdrawn from the market.