Madison Area Lyme Support Group

https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/video/9.7048962

Why do so many celebrities have Lyme disease?

January 17, 2026

1. Pulling a tick off before 24 guarantees nothing. Pathogens can be in the salivary glands which means transmission can and does happen rapidly.  They should have interviewed independent Canadian tick researcher John Scott.  He immediately would have set them straight on all things tick related.
2. Early antibiotic treatment has to be early enough, long enough, and smart enough, but again, does not a guarantee a person will not develop a chronic infection requiring years of complex, expensive, and savvy treatment, not to mention the fact untold numbers are misdiagnosed or undiagnosed – making their cases even tougher because they weren’t caught early.  This large subgroup is simply kicked to the curb.
3. There are other pathogens complicating the picture besides multiple strains of borrelia that cause disease and are transmitted by ticks.  They each require different treatments but aren’t even mentioned in this piece.
4. The ‘experts’ that say there are ‘no risk areas’ are full of beans. To date, ticks are marching into places they’ve never been before, yet because of Andrew Spielman‘s antiquated and faulty maps of where ticks supposedly are and are not, untold numbers are being denied diagnoses and treatment.  See: the-counfounding-debate-over-lyme-in-the-south-speilmans-maps.  The fact ticks travel globally on birds,  reptiles, and mammals, as well as the fact our government spread ticks via airplane hasn’t helped either.
5. ‘Early Lyme’ being ‘straight forward’ to diagnose is laughable.  This website has recorded story after story of those who were misdiagnosed and sent home only worsen into chronic Lyme. Doctors are still telling people with an EM rash that it’s just a spider bite, and sending them packing. In my experience, most patients have to figure it all out themselves. Lyme/MSIDS has been called a ‘do it yourself plague.’
6. The reporter states that in 2024, Canada had 5,700 reported cases of Lyme. In the U.S. even the corrupt CDC admits that the number of Lyme disease cases is likely much higher than reported, due to under-reporting and changes in surveillance methods. In 2024 in the U.S., reported cases of Lyme disease rose from an average of about 37,000 from 2017–2019 to 62,000 in 2022. That’s an increase of nearly 70%. In order to report a case, you must meet the strict and arbitrary CDC reporting criteria using a test that is only 50% sensitive in the early phase of disease. Further, each state has their own voluntary reporting standards and ‘low incidence’ states are held to a stricter standard by having to show not only positive lab evidence, but clinical info which puts a heavy burden on local health officials. Lack of awareness and under-diagnosis is still a known long-standing issue for many states including California. You can’t count something that hasn’t been reported and you can’t report something you aren’t educated about. Due to these issues, the CDC includes insurance claim data to estimate cases. In 2021, there were 24,611 cases reported but the CDC estimated the actual number to be 476,000.  In the past, the CDC has said that Lyme disease cases are underreported by a factor of 10, which if used for 2024 – would total 620,000 annual cases.  Source Hopefully, it’s clear to see all of this is very unclear!
7. Chronic Lyme is recognized by science, but you have to depart from IDSA ‘approved’ science, look at the global science, and realize Lyme/MSIDS will never fit neatly into a large randomized controlled trial (RCT). RCTs were designed for standardized drug testing, not complex, multi-systemic conditions such as Lyme/MSIDS.  This is something ‘mainstream’ medicine refuses to acknowledge, and the media blindly follows. Lyme science has been rigged from the get-go and continues to entirely omit the sickest patients due to how they create the study design for research.
8. The doctor who spoke in the news story, Dr. Paul Auwaerter of Johns Hopkins has a long, known history of denying chronic Lyme. He only presents one side of a very disputed coin. To only choose to represent one side and over emphasizing that there’s a ‘whole industry created for chronic Lyme that’s taking advantage of people’ is not only unethical from a journalistic perspective, it ignores people like me, my husband, and virtually every single patient I work with who very well might be dead without this life-saving treatment.  Unconscionable.  
9. All independent testing is presented as quackery – a long used trick of the establishment to monopolize testing. Cabalists spout ‘unvalidated’ test, as if there’s a true gold standard.  Make no mistake, currently ALL testing for tick-borne disease is abysmal – and everyone knows it until biased pieces like this are presented and they revert back to regurgitating and not thinking.
10. Since the report is made by CBC News in Canada, they should have at least interviewed Vett Lloyd, a biology professor at Mount Allison University in New Brunswick, who says most Lyme cases are missed with the standard test. She co-authored a study  with Dr. Ralph Hawkins, a clinical associate professor at the University of Calgary, using data from New Brunswick where they found the two-tiered tests miss 90 per cent of real Lyme infections. In Ontario, she says about 80 per cent of cases are missed.
11. Current testing relies upon measuring antibodies that take 4-6 weeks to develop, can not distinguish between active infection from prior exposure or measure response to treatment.  The window for accurate testing is so small that only a handful of those infected are getting positives.  Trust me, there’s few false negatives. As Dr. McDonald aptly states:
    

    “If false results are to be feared, it is the false negative result which holds the greatest peril for the patient.” –Alan McDonald, Pathologist

12.  Cabalists admit early diagnosis and treatment is best as the infection worsens with time, so how does a test that takes over a month to work help at all?
13. A gold standard culture method test did exist but was disappeared due to the CDC testing monopoly.  There’s been a long and concerted effort to suppress direct detection tests.  In 2025, a study showed two investigational diagnostics outperform current tests for early detection yet nothing changes.
14. The same doctor would rather regurgitate the long-held Cabalist phrase of ‘medically unexplained symptoms,’ (MUS) as the cause of why people are unwell than dare to even consider tick-borne infections and learn from ILADS.
15. The journalist continues following the Cabalist MO when she makes sure to politely empathize that there are sick people who feel dismissed by the system, but that ‘private testing’ comes with significant risk – and then cites a paper done with the same faulty study design by none other than Dr. Paul Auwaerter, the same doctor who denies chronic Lyme and uses the MUS diagnosis so freely.  Seeing a trend yet?
16. Treatment for early Lyme disease is not so ‘simple,’ due to the fact that many continue with symptoms – proving it’s obviously not working! Not to mention treatment failures have been seen in nearly every antibiotic study ever done. 
17. It is not rare to have chronic Lyme when you consider the fact researchers only count those who are diagnosed and treated early into this group. When you add in those diagnosed and treated late, a whopping 40-60% go on to suffer long-term symptoms.
18. The piece uses the infamous Cabalist term ‘Post Treatment Lyme Disease Syndrome’ (PTLDS) which is horribly inaccurate, and faulty to the core. Then, while stating it’s ‘incurable,’ the report bashes alternative treatments and gives the ancient yet faulty 2001 Klempner study as ‘proof’ long term antibiotics don’t work and carry significant risks. In other words, just accept your sad, sorry lot, stay sick, and die already.
19. The piece finishes with stating the media needs to be more critical of extremely ill celebrities who claim they have Lyme disease – as if being sick isn’t hard enough! Imagine if this was posited for cancer patients!  Can you even imagine?  Yet, it’s perfectly fine to dismiss Lyme/MSIDS patients.
20. Another issue completely bypassed by this piece is that due to the controversy, doctors are too afraid to diagnose and treat patients, giving yet another reason for massive underreporting. For decades doctors have had to close their practices or have been sanctioned and have had to pay hefty fines.  My own doctor went through this gauntlet, paying 50K to protect his practice.  This is why LLMD’s do not accept insurance.  It’s quite often the insurance companies turning them in.  All of this plays a part in this Shakespearian like tragedy and should be fairly represented.

It’s high time the media wakes up and smells the coffee.  There was once a time when journalists endeavored to be unbiased, present the various sides of a story, and let the reader/viewer come to their own conclusions.  Sadly, those days appear to be long gone.  My journalism profs are rolling over in their graves.