Except that the tick danger is not exaggerated. If you frequent the woods (and I mean, go inside them, not just staying on the paths), then you will get ticks (clothing doesn't make a difference unless you go in a space suit). And if you keep doing that for years, you will rack up a dozen - or rather, dozens - of ticks, and chances for tick-borne diseases are surprisingly high.
This depends on so many things - your comment is precisely hysterical.
It depends on where you live, whether or not you check yourself after you leave the woods, what kinds of ticks they are, whether the disease is being carried, and what kind of disease it is.
I grew up in the woods. I've had lots of ticks crawl all over me. I've only been bitten a time or two. And the ticks I've encountered don't carry Lyme's disease.
And that is NOT to say that my experience is everyone's experience and that there is no danger. But your comment is absolutely exaggerated.
My statements are true for most of central Europe. They are also true for large parts of the US. Solid data backs this up. This is not an emotional argument, tick prevalence is a well-researched field with lots of data.
The data says it's likely you'll get ticks, but not that you'll suffer severe consequences if you do minimal care. Every bushcrafter and scout knows to check for ticks. The prevalence of life-long Lyme disease with debilitation consequences is very small. I know that you're not even claiming otherwise, but the way you're making your argument is scare mongering and misleading to those who know nothing about ticks and tick-borne diseases.
Yes, you'll get ticks. And you need to check for them, remove them the right way, and if you get red rings you need to go to your GP and get antibiotics. But out of the millions of tick bites that happen, tiny percentages cause anything more than a few days of fever (even that is already rare!) and debilitating, life-long consequences have a probability of happening in the same league as, say, getting bitten by a shark, or being shot at by Russian cruise missiles while you're on your way to your holiday destination.
While if the gruesome story of how 'a tick I got just from being outside' is front page news for a few days, many people will think 'o I better keep my children inside'. And the aggregate effects of that (while not as spectacular, or even reducible to this news item), are worse than whatever it is they're trying to prevent.
How often do you see 'person has something horrible happen to them, studies the field for 10 years, becomes expert and launches a well-balanced education or prevention campaign'? I've never heard it. What I do hear and see is 'person with median intelligence has something happen to them, goes on myopic crusade using mostly pathos in the form of graphic descriptions of their physical tribulations as a crutch for their own emotional healing'. Nothing wrong with people of median intelligence (or less), but it is wrong when they use things that happened to them by accident as a means of presenting a distorted vision of reality to others.
