The next MAHA conspiracy is about this year’s record tick season, it involves Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates – and it was also disproven three years ago.
Social media users are claiming the billionaire philanthropist bred and released ticks with alpha-gal syndrome, which causes life-threatening allergic reactions to red meat. The MAHA Moms Coalition asked farmers to come forward to confirm whether boxes of ticks were being left on their land.
The ticks theory alleges that Gates wants to turn consumers toward the plant-based meat products he has invested in, though people sharing it did not provide any evidence for those claims.
The syndrome is also tied to Lone Star ticks, which are completely different from those in a British research program to genetically modify cattle ticks funded partially by Gates, according to a 2023 fact-check by The Associated Press, after the same conspiracy theory made an earlier appearance.
The theory has an unnerving amount of online support, despite being false. One video comment about Gates’ responsibility got more than 122,000 likes on Instagram this past week.
Still, that’s not the only crazy tick conspiracy social media users have been propping up since 2023.
The Covid vaccine-maker Pfizer is also to blame, some users claim, solely for the reason that the company has been working on a vaccine for Lyme disease.
Users allege Pfizer planted ticks, too, to increase demand for their upcoming product.
”Did y’all know Pfizer started working on a tick vaccine in 2021 and is set to release in 2027,” wrote user @colinfrank. “What f—–n timing huh.”
Pfizer actually announced the plans in 2020 and said it was planning submissions to regulatory authorities after announcing the vaccine was more than 70 percent effective in preventing Lyme disease last March.
There is “no evidence to support these claims,” the non-profit-formed Public Health Communications Collaborative says. The Collaborative was formed amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Other posts falsely claimed that the vaccine, which targets a protein in the bacteria that causes Lyme disease, is mRNA-based and repeated myths about mRNA vaccine safety,” it said.
Vaccine hesitancy has been a major factor doctors have cited in the resurgence of once-eliminated measles and record flu seasons.
Neither the Gates Foundation nor Pfizer immediately replied to The Independent’s request for comment on the matter.
And, these aren’t the first tick conspiracies to spread widely.
A previously circulated theory alleged that Lyme disease originated from a Cold War-era U.S. bioweapons program at New York’s Plum Island Animal Disease Center.
That’s something even Health and Human Service Sec. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., said he “probably” promoted.
It’s been fact-checked by the American Lyme Disease Foundation.
Joellen Lampman, the tick and school IPM coordinator at Cornell University’s Integrated Pest Management Program, told The Independent she’s been hearing about Plum island since she began educating people on tick protection.
“I have stopped trying to dispute it and begun asking questions. ‘What if it is true?’ ‘How does that change your desire/need to protect yourself from a tick bite?’ Because I believe if we blame issues on nefarious ‘others,’ then we remove our confidence that we can protect ourselves,” she said.
“After that exchange, we can more easily discuss what steps to take.”
And the real explanation for the most tick-related ER visits in nearly a decade? Well, human actions do contribute to rising risks.
”Warmer, shorter winters combine with changes in how we manage our landscapes, reduced wildlife diversity, invasive species (both plants that enhance tick habitat and different tick species) and how we interact with our environments to increase the risk of tick-borne diseases,” Lampman explained.
