Ohioans safe from many dangers, but not from ticks
Among the world’s deadliest animals to humans, ticks hardly rate statistically.
A graphic that appears on the blog of software mogul Bill Gates indicates that, rating the planet’s 15 most lethal animals, mosquitoes rule. They are the most bloodthirsty, one might say. Although small print cautions that “all calculations have wide error margins,” the graphic shows morbidity by mosquito annually runs to 750,000 lives.
That’s more than the combined total for the 14 next deadliest animals.
Homo sapiens, a species that likes to think of itself as No. 1, finishes second — albeit a solid second — by causing about 450,000 human deaths annually.
Only a minute portion of those deaths comes from people shooting other people with handguns. War, rebellion, pollution, drifting chemicals, radioactivity, fast food, motor vehicles, state executions, climate change, illegal and prescribed drugs, hospital stays, collapsed bridges, boating accidents, low wages and lack of access to health care all surely contribute directly to individual dead ends or indirectly to the diseases or catastrophes that lead to dead ends.
What isn’t much in doubt, no matter how the numbers are compiled, is that humans cause more deaths among their own species than the next 13 deadliest animals. So don’t mess with No. 2.
In descending order of lethality, here’s the rest, a killer baker’s dozen: snake (50,000 deaths) dog (25,000), tsetse fly (10,000), assassin bug (10,000), freshwater snail (10,000), ascaris roundworm (2,500), tapeworm (2,000), crocodile (1,000), hippopotamus (500), elephant (100), lion (100), wolf (10) and shark (10).
Hardly any Ohioans are killed by snakes, snails, tsetse flies, assassin bugs or crocodiles. And though female mosquitoes annoy, being ubiquitous and unavoidable in their built-in blood lust, they are not particularly feared. Dogs, despite the occasional mauling of a blameless bystander, in general are downright loved and admired. And, as all know from the song lyric, people who need people are the luckiest people in the world.
Neither lucky nor loved is a tick.
Ticks, in fact, pretty much are loathed. Why? Most likely because they are loathsome.
Case in point: They creep up from the ground onto a victim, crawl furtively up the body, seek crevices and hairlines, plant their heads inside skin and greedily begin sucking up precious bodily fluids until engorged like a sprouting mushroom cap of blood.
These are not habits designed to make friends, even among killers like dogs, wolves, lions, hippos and elephants. Not so much that ticks make people dead, but ticks can make people sick enough to almost wish they were dead.
Ohio long has been part of tick country, though the ticks that dwelled in Ohio until recent years were known mainly for their buttugliness and their biteand-bloat habit. Nowadays, though, the types of ticks known for transmitting dreaded Lyme disease and Rocky Mountain spotted fever have set up shop in the Buckeye State.
Lyme disease, which the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Infection (CDC) says infects about 30,000 people annually in the United States, is carried by the tiny blacklegged tick, aka deer tick. Deer ticks were first found in Coshocton County in 2010 and since have been located in 56 Ohio counties.
Established populations exist in at least 26 counties, including Licking, researchers at Ohio State University report. Delaware, Fairfield and Franklin counties are suspected of harboring deer ticks.
Lyme disease is caused by a bacterium that over time can spread into the joints and nervous system of those infected, sometimes causing permanent damage. Though treatable, particularly in its early stages when the symptoms include fatigue, chills, muscle aches and joint pain, a Lyme disease diagnosis can be difficult.
The incidence of Lyme disease in Ohio remains low. For example, Ohio in 2012 had less than one confirmed case for each 200,000 members of the population based on 49 confirmed cases. New Hampshire, the state with the highest incidence, showed about 150 cases per 200,000 people, a rate based on 1,002 confirmed diagnoses.
As of 2012, about 95 percent of the confirmed Lyme disease cases came from 13 states, mostly in the East and Northeast, including the border state of Pennsylvania. The spread of Lyme disease into the human population requires not only deer ticks but also deer and white-footed mice.
Although the deer ticks only recently showed up in Ohio, deer and whitefooted mice long have been abundant. Where this is heading is pretty much predictable.