Forget Ebola, Sars and Zika: ticks are the next global health threat | Science | The Guardian
▻https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2018/jan/25/forget-ebola-sars-and-zika-ticks-are-the-next-global-health-threat
Since the beginning of our species we have been at war. It’s a continuous, neverending fight against the smallest of adversaries: armies of pathogens and parasites. As we have developed new ways to survive and stop them, they have evolved ever more complex and ingenious methods to thwart our efforts.
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Humans have faced numerous attempts to challenge our dominance on planet Earth , and from the Black Death to the Spanish flu, we have weathered them all. However, since the start of the 21st century, with its trend towards global interconnectedness, these onslaughts are ever-increasing. In the past 17 years we have battled Sars, the Ebola virus, Mers, and more recently the mysterious mosquito-borne Zika virus. These diseases seeming to appear from nowhere and rapidly ravage our populations. One commonality is that they almost always originate in animals before jumping across to people, and few parasites are as good at jumping between animals and people as the tick.