Why cant we just kill all the ticks?

The ticks got an early start this year, and they’ve been busy.In April, 105 of every 100,000 emergency-room visits nationwide involved a tick bite, up 52% from the year before.In May, that number reached 112.

The CDC has been tracking these visits since 2017, and this spring brought the highest early-season numbers it’s ever recorded.New York has averaged more than 17,500 new Lyme disease cases annually over the past three years.New York City reported 2,928 preliminary cases in 2025, up 15% from the year before.

Most were acquired outside the five boroughs, particularly on Long Island and upstate.Lyme infections in California are lower, but that doesn’t mean ticks are less pervasive.The western blacklegged tick, California’s main Lyme carrier, has been found in 56 of the state’s 58 counties.Even the Bay Area has areas where infected ticks turn up in alarming numbers.

In San Mateo County, about one in every 20 young western blacklegged ticks tested in 2024 and 2025 carried the bacteria that cause Lyme disease.At Wunderlich County Park in Woodside, the figure was more than 12%.Now New York’s first confirmed human case of Bourbon virus has turned up on Long Island.

The rare and potentially deadly infection is spread by the lone-star tick, and there’s no vaccine to prevent it and no medication that specifically treats it.The Bourbon virus joins Lyme disease, babesiosis, anaplasmosis, ehrlichiosis, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, Powassan virus, and red meat allergies as all the ways ticks can ruin your summer.

Or your life.It raises the question, how many diseases does one parasite get to spread before we stop politely coexisting with it? What’s stopping us from just killing all the ticks?Because this is getting tiresome.I’m done with being lectured to wear long pants in August, spray chemicals onto my ankles, and inspect every hidden region of my body because I brushed against a shrub.

Last month, I tried talking my wife into adopting an opossum, ...