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I understand where you are coming from. You will be worried about ticks with or without the vaccine. I will too! But I think the vaccine isn’t for making you stop protecting yourself from ticks (it can’t do that, as you noted). The important part is it’s a small poke for a better chance at staying healthy. If you are worried in both cases, the question becomes is the time/cost to get the shot worth the result. So if you walk in the woods a lot the answer is very likely yes. If you never go near ticks then maybe not.

Another way to think about it is if there was a vaccine to stop car accidents that is only 75% effective, is it worth getting the shot even though I’ll still be afraid of car accidents? Absolutely! The shot is unbelievably easy to get and probably cheap. It doesn’t solve everything, but it is so easy to do it’s hard not to be worth it.



Your calculus forgets about side effects. If the gain is very minor then it only takes minor side effects to swing the balance.


You are welcome to compare the number of cases of suspected-but-not-confirmed side effects with the number of people getting Lyme every year.

You may find a difference of a few orders of magnitude.




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