One of the reasons why so many Americans are deeply afraid to go outside and enjoy nature is because they fear getting bit by a tick. When I was growing up, getting bit by a tick was very rare, and getting a disease from a tick bite was even rarer. But now Lyme disease and Alpha-gal syndrome are spreading like wildfire, and nobody has any solutions. This is particularly true in the Northeast and the Midwest. The information that I am going to share with you in this article is deeply disturbing. We have never experienced anything like this in our entire history, and an expert at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health is warning that 2026 is going to be “a very bad year”…
As the weather warms up, scientists have a dire warning before you head outdoors. When it comes to ticks, “unfortunately, it seems that we are in for a very bad year,” said Nicole Baumgarth, a professor of immunology and infectious disease at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
I never imagined that I would be writing about tick bites in 2026.
But the truth is that what we are facing is truly a nightmare, and it is getting worse year after year.
Looking ahead, Baumgarth is telling us that it is “unlikely this trend is going to change”…
“Frustratingly … we cannot and have not been able to bend the curve,” said Baumgarth. “We see an increasing number of tick infections, tickborne illnesses every year … and it’s unlikely this trend is going to change.”’
For those of you that are skeptical, let me give you some hard numbers.
According to the CDC, the percentage of emergency room visits that are for tick bites is way up compared to last year…
More than 100 of every 100,000 emergency department visits recorded in April were because of tick bites, CDC data updated earlier this week shows. During the same time last year, tick bites accounted for only 68 out of every 100,000 visits.
Incident rates in the Northeast sit at 73 out of every 100,000, the highest in the nation, per CDC data. In the Midwest, the incident rate is, so far, 53 out of 100,000.
More people are getting bit by ticks.
That is a fact.
It is also a fact that ticks can spread Lyme disease, Rocky Mountain spotted fever and Alpha-gal syndrome.
Have you ever known someone with a serious case of Lyme disease?
It can be severely debilitating.
In some cases, those with Lyme disease are simply no longer able to function normally. They were once thriving, but now their lives have been totally ruined by a truly insidious illness.
Unfortunately, the number of Lyme disease cases has been growing at an exponential rate.
In Michigan, the number of cases grew by 168 percent from 2020 to 2024…
And the numbers are getting ugly. According to the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, Lyme disease cases in Michigan increased 168% between 2020 and 2024, from 452 confirmed cases to 1,215.
Anaplasmosis, the second most common tick-borne disease in the state, nearly quintupled in the same window. Tick populations have expanded across both peninsulas, and nearly every Michigan county now carries confirmed Lyme risk.
In Ohio, the number of cases went from 40 in 2010 to 2,819 in 2025…
Incidents of tick-borne Lyme disease in Ohio have risen substantially over the past several years as the state becomes more accommodating of blacklegged ticks that transmit the disease to humans.
In 2010, there were 40 cases of Lyme disease reported across Ohio, compared to 415 in 2020 and 2,819 in 2025, according to Dr. Bruce Vanderhoff, director of the Ohio Department of Health.
So what is going to happen if the number of cases continues to rise like this?
At this point, approximately 90 percent of all Lyme disease cases in the United States are located in just 14 states…
According to Harvard Health about 90% of U.S. cases have been reported in 14 states: Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.
There is so much natural beauty in the Northeast, but there are a lot of people that will never walk in the woods anymore because they are so scared of Lyme disease.
Of course many would argue that the exponential growth of Alpha-gal syndrome has become an even bigger crisis.
A single bite from a Lone Star tick can cause you to become allergic to meat for the rest of your life…
The Lone Star tick is a big problem because it transmits alpha-gal syndrome, a condition where a single bite triggers your immune system to develop an allergy to alpha-gal, a sugar molecule found in most mammal tissue. Beef. Pork. Lamb. Rabbit. Venison.
Yes, a tick bite can make you allergic to venison.
The CDC estimates up to 450,000 Americans are living with it and acknowledges that’s likely a significant undercount. What makes it hard to catch is the delay—reactions hit two to six hours after eating red meat. By then, most people aren’t connecting the steak they had for dinner to the hives and stomach pain showing up at midnight. It can be misdiagnosed for years.
Nearly half a million people already have Alpha-gal syndrome, and that number is growing with each passing day.
Could you imagine having to give up eating meat forever?
Alpha-gal syndrome is the formal medical name for the specific immune response, and “Mammalian meat allergy” describes the physical reaction itself.
A study that was released in the middle of last year examined the growth of “Mammalian meat allergy” in the United States from 2015 to 2025…
Mammalian meat allergy (MMA), increasingly linked to delayed hypersensitivity reactions such as alpha-gal syndrome, is a growing public health concern. This study evaluates the incidence, prevalence, and incidence rate of MMA in a large, diverse population of over 114 million individuals across two time periods (2015-2020 and 2021-2025), with stratification by age, sex, race, and ethnicity.
What that study discovered is that the number of Americans that have “Mammalian meat allergy” increased by 5,500 percent in just ten years…
MMA increased dramatically across all demographics. Overall incidence proportion rose by over 5,500%, with the most substantial increases observed in individuals over 40 years old. Age-stratified analysis within racial groups revealed particularly sharp increases among Black (9,530%) and Hispanic (7,678%) adults over 40. Females experienced a steeper rise in incidence rate (11,169%) than males (7,426%). Predictive modeling projects continued growth through 2030, with incidence proportions in Black and Hispanic populations expected to increase by 57% and 72%, respectively.
It is just a coincidence that we have seen an explosion in the number of Americans with “Mammalian meat allergy” or is something else going on here?
Interestingly, last December President Trump ordered an investigation into “biological weapons experiments on and in relation to ticks [and] tick-borne diseases”…
On December 18 last year, Donald Trump signed into law an order to “review and report on biological weapons experiments on and in relation to ticks [and] tick-borne diseases.” The investigation is long overdue but even so, the facts it uncovers will come as a shock to many. A growing body of evidence shows that during the Cold War ticks were tinkered with and used as delivery mechanisms for biological warfare agents. And these weaponized ticks may have been released both intentionally and unintentionally on an unsuspecting public by the US military.
Ticks and the diseases they transmit (such as Lyme) pose a growing threat to Americans, the military and to agriculture. Record numbers of tick bites have been reported in New York (in 2024), Maine (in 2024), and Wisconsin (in 2023). The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates approximately 500,000 new cases of Lyme disease annually. About one-third of patients do not respond to recommended treatment protocols.
If these microbes have been genetically altered, we need to know. If the military harmed civilians through irresponsible experiments, the government has an obligation to acknowledge and remedy those harms. And if the original outbreak near Lyme, Connecticut, in the 1970s resulted from a hostile foreign act, future biosecurity protections must be strengthened. Knowing the root cause of an epidemic is vital in developing treatment strategies, containing the outbreaks and preventing future ones. And then there’s the issue of what else ticks may be carrying.
Why would President Trump use taxpayer resources on such an investigation?
Obviously he must believe that something has been going on that shouldn’t have been going on.
Hopefully we will get some answers.
Meanwhile, there has been a firestorm of speculation on social media, and the fact that mysterious boxes of ticks are being found in the middle of nowhere certainly isn’t helping matters.
If you get bitten by a tick, you should carefully remove it right away and seek medical help if necessary…
If you find a tick on your body, the advice is to remove it right away. Using tweezers, you’ll want to grab the tick as close to your skin as possible and pull it away “with steady, even pressure,” the CDC explains. You’ll then want to dispose of the tick by flushing it down the toilet, putting it in alcohol, wrapping it tightly with tape, or sealing it in a container.
What you do next depends on the reaction you have to the tick.
The Mayo Clinic says serious reactions – severe headache, trouble breathing, paralysis, heart palpitations – are reasons to seek emergency care.
We live at a time when major pestilences are breaking out all over the globe.
Lyme disease is a major pestilence.
Alpha-gal syndrome is a major pestilence.
When I was growing up, I never heard of either of them, but now each one has become a serious national crisis.
Those that are responsible should be held accountable, but I don’t think that is going to happen any time soon.
Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.
About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com. He has also written nine other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”. When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing. You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter. Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites. These are such troubled times, and people need hope. John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.
