BY BJ ANDREWS
W hat is a Zombie Tick and what’s my infection risk as a dog owner? Does the Zombie Tick induce coma or carry diseases like Lymes, Ehrlichiosis, Babesiosis and…? Let’s hope not because the internet is infected with Zombie Ticks! In fact, it may be worse than the worst computer viruses you can catch online. You don’t need a doctor if you stick to print media like this beautiful magazine. When you see an online alert about Zombie Ticks, just take a big dose of the truth factor. There is no such tick, it is just hit-bait that sucks your time instead of blood. We call them ghost stories. This one from the New York Times was used to worry or intrigue you enough to get a click: “Dog Ticks, the Zombies of the Woods”– The New York Times (https://www.nytimes. com/2017/06/08/. . . /dog- ticks - the - zombies-of-the-woods.html). June 8, 2017: No scientific paper is required to prove that ticks are abound in the New York City area. People who have walked through an unmown field near or… Snopes launched a year after The- DogPlace.org . It was a great verification resource until they decided to build a better Google ladder using Ghost Sto- ries meant to scare you into clicking a link. The Zombie Tick is classic! “FACT CHECK: Can the Bite of a ‘Reverse Zombie’ Tick”– Snopes.com . “Claim: The bite of a rare breed of tick most commonly called the lone star tick can cause itching, stomach cramps, breathing difficulties and an allergic reaction...” You see only the illusion of an eye- catching story. The average person,
who having clicked the link, will remain on that site at least twenty seconds, try- ing to find substance. Dog owners were especially susceptible to that frighten- ing headline and they clicked by the millions. Mission Accomplished. The Snopes “tick disease” alert was released June 17, 2017 and is typi- cal of hit-bait. Old or skimpy articles brought forward with a current date the search engines and information- seekers may find relevant. A deplorable part of online marketing. It is hard to tell the difference between hit-bait and valuable articles as would be helpful to researchers—until you’ve been on the page long enough to be “counted” as traffic. The simple fact is there is no such thing as a monstrous new type of tick. But here’s something that may be more valuable than an inoculation. Behind the clever headlines there is a degree of human risk from mosquito and tick bites, among them: Lyme Dis- ease, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, Ehrlichiosis, Babesiosis and Tularemia (Live links available online at TheDog- Press.com ). I have found no independently docu- mented medical source other than VCU (Virginia Commonwealth University) for the Zombie tick analogy. A subset of National Institute Of Health.gov con- tains an abstract on Tick Bite Allergy but no mention of anything that could be considered a Zombie Tick, i.e. all ticks are blood suckers.
Ghost Story, the “tick causes red meat allergy.” The information dutifully dis- played by Google is, “More commonly known as the lone star tick, this unnerv- ing arachnid can transmit an illness with symptoms similar to Lyme disease, as well as a substance that can cause an allergy to red meat.” Ho hum. TheDogPress.com covered that overblown tick-causes-meat-allergy (Google “TheDogPlace.org, tick meat allergy”) last January. We are hearing a lot about “fake news” and as someone who cut teeth in the news business, it pains me. Until internet was born we all got our news “at 6 and 11” and from newspapers. Both sources were reliable. What was broadcast or in hard copy was a citable record and one to which a published expected to be held account for by their competitors. With the internet, everyone became an instant expert on everything. For the first decade of public internet (1997–2007) news sources still prided themselves on accuracy. By the sec- ond decade things were getting sloppy. The competition for viewers and read- ers became intense. Even the weather reports our grandparents relied on as much as when they were farming… well, they changed. TV weather is now more about visuals than accurate fore- casts. We are treated to “live footage” of twisters, fires, flood or drought.
On June 17, 2017, another infamous internet headline read: “Can the Bite of a ‘Reverse Zombie’ Tick Make You Aller- gic to Red Meat?”This one was a clumsy attempt to capitalize on yet another It’s as though we’ve become men- tal zombies who are awakened, not by nightfall but by blaring sound bites and gruesome headlines. ZOMBIE TICK? AS A MATTER OF FACT… 134 • S how S ight M agazine , J uly 2017
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