There are MANY facebook groups filled with people fully convinced that they have Lyme disease. These groups teach that virtually any and every symptom is caused by the infection and that basically everyone has it. As if this wasn’t insane enough, the people in the group will push each other to go on antibiotics - via so called lyme literate doctors - until they are on the verge of death due to the side effects. Worse: if a lab test is negative they say you should treat by symptom (referring people back to the massive list of virtually every known symptom as proof that they have lyme). It gets worse: even if you get really bad reactions to the treatment, they say you are having a herxheimer reaction and to keep pushing. It gets worse: having followed many of those groups for years, it’s rare that anyone actually gets better from whatever symptom they were having that led them down the self destructive path of lyme self-diagnosis. Well, it actually is a bit worse: even if by some chance you did had a positive lyme test, and if by chance you did got years worth of antibiotics, SOT treatments, etc etc etc… and now you have finally a clean test- well actually it’s bartonella, or parasites, or babesia, or EBV or whatever … so you must carry on. And, it’s not that these people are idiots, it’s just that they fall into a very specific category: 1) have real symptoms, 2) have no real answers from medicine, 3) have internet access, 4) have no notion, not even a tiny spec, of the existence of a concept called falsifiability. So when i read that there’s a new at home test for lyme… on tics(!) i can only imagine the massive amount of suffering this will cause on these poor people… and i imagine many if them will put their blood on the test and come up with all kinds of ways to use this to find yet another proof that they have it

We are quickly entering a medical dark age due to the conspiracy theorists, “Do Your Own Research-ers,” YouTube influencers, and other kinds of Internet-borne DIY self diagnosis.

What didn't help was the response to the pandemic by governments and the scientific establishment, that supplied an unfortunate and pretty devastating blow to public trust in these institutions.