Just idle pondering on my part. Let’s start off by saying that in the US the chances of getting anything major from a tick or mosquito is pretty small. That said, which one is more likely to lead to complications?
Florida and Maine are both eastern states, but I would be surprised if they had the same answer.
If you’re talking roughly the mid-Atlantic states, everyone makes a fairly big deal out of the dangers of ticks and Lyme disease, but nobody worries much about mosquitoes. I have no idea if that actually reflects the actual medical risks or not.
NY State here. I got Lyme from a tick bite, which was fortunately diagnosed early (thank you bullseye rash) so no complications. Never got anything from a mosquito that required a doctor visit or a prescription.
And I know people here who have suffered a lot from Lyme, much more than I did. Can’t think of anyone who got anything from a mosquito bite.
So in my area, it’s ticks hands down, though admittedly most of my tick bites never led to anything–and a good thing too.
In New England, it is ticks as well by a large margin. My daughter, MIL and even dog have gotten Lyme disease from deer ticks on separate occasions. Thankfully, they were all caught very early and were treatable but my MIL suffered with it for a while and had aftereffects that lasted many months. Friends, acquaintances and coworkers have also gotten it with varying degrees of severity. It is a serious and permanently debilitating disease if you let it go for too long like my cousin did although he thinks he got it in the western U.S. or maybe Florida but he didn’t seek treatment until it was too late to prevent permanent disability.
Infected deer ticks are everywhere around this part of Massachusetts and they are tiny (smaller than a ground black pepper flake). You have to really pay attention when you come back from the woods because you can have dozens of them embedded in you skin and not even realize it until you see that telltale bullseye rash.
Mosquitoes are a much bigger disease vector worldwide of course but the areas that they cause the most infections are subtropical and tropical. Deer ticks are very good at transmitting Lyme disease even in the colder parts of temperate climate zones.
I’m in western PA and it’s tick bites, no contest. Mosquito bites are a dime a dozen around here – I can’t even sit on my back porch and read anymore because within ten minutes I’m covered with the damned things. They’re itchy and annoying, but rub on some calamine lotion and you’re good to go.
Ticks, on the other hand, are way more serious. We’re over run with deer here, (to the point that there have been several deer culls in the area), and lyme disease is no joking matter. My grandfather had it when I was 16. (I hate deer – rats with antlers)
But TASTY rats with antlers.
Yes they are but I am not sure if it is worth it.
“Deer–vehicle collisions lead to about 200 human deaths and $1.1 billion in property damage every year. State and federal governments, insurance companies, and drivers spend an additional $3 billion in an effort to reduce and manage the increasing number of deer-vehicle collisions.”
That does not include agricultural losses or the costs to treat the Lyme disease cases that they transmit. Deer are a quickly growing menace across most of the U.S. Thank a deer hunter the next time you see one because they are paying good money to provide a valuable public service. I have almost been wiped out myself by deer that jumped in front of me at night during an attempted cervine murder-suicide stunt just like they are wont to do. Bambi was Walt Disney’s ultimate propaganda film.
Here is a map of Lyme disease cases in the U.S. It isn’t fun to live in the heart of the dark blue zone like I do. It is inevitable that you will know people that get it and have to go through the aggressive medical intervention and all the associated expenses to avoid becoming permanently disabled by it.
http://www.cdc.gov/lyme/stats/maps.html
You don’t have to worry much about mosquitoes in New England. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of them especially during the summer and they will bite you and piss you off but they don’t have aspirations to destroy your family, your property and your life.
I’m not sure what you mean by “not sure if it is worth it”. What isn’t worth it? Eating them? I’m all for culling the buggers…and then eating them. I know plenty of people that have been nearly killed by the bastards. But they are indeed tasty bastards.
I simply mean kill most of them. Sure you can eat them as a side benefit as well and I expect most people will but that shouldn’t be the main goal right now because they are so overpopulated in many areas. Encourage more hunting and have programs to get more young people into deer hunting especially in the suburban Northeast where there are way too many deer and not enough hunters or natural predators.There simply aren’t enough people deer hunting today to keep the numbers in check in many areas. Professional culls won’t work because there are simply too many of them spread over an incredibly huge area. We need literally millions of volunteer hunters to keep their numbers in check year after year within the tag limits and rules set by the various state Wildlife, Fish and Game Departments.
I don’t have a definitive answer, but here are some leads:
CDC’s page on vector-borne diseases. They specifically call out Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, Lyme Disease, and West Nile Virus.
Main CDC website on West Nile, stating that “Less than 1% of infected people develop a serious, sometimes fatal, neurologic illness.” (I’m not sure that’s apples-to-apples with the above cases, since most infected people don’t show up in the stats in the first link).
2060 cases reported of West Nile in 2015., of which 1,360 were “neuroinvasive”, which I THINK is the bad sort.
Now for ticks:
Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever shows up overwhelmingly–like 60% of all US cases–in six states in the east/Southeast. Overall there are around 3,000 cases per year. 20% of untreated cases may be fatal–but with early treatment, there’s very little danger.
Lyme disease “is the most commonly reported vectorborne illness in the United States.” If left untreated, infection can spread to joints, the heart, and the nervous system. "
From what I see here, I think ticks would win in the shitty bug runoff, but I can’t give a definitive answer.
Good question.
Most of the people I know in the middle Eastern states who have had serious consequences from either vector suffered from Lyme disease spread by ticks.
Most of the people I know here in the middle and eastern south who are suffering serious disease from either vector were sickened by mosquitos.
Those are just the people I know, a few from ticks and two from mosquitos.
The CDC should have better statistics.
No matter where you are, neither Lyme disease nor West Nile are anything to ignore. The consequences can be life-long and life-changing. 
I count about 14 fatalities in eastern seaboard states in 2015.
Oh absolutely! I’m just tired of people crying about how cruel these hunts are to poor Bambi. Bambi is an asshole. (My uncle used to make deer jerky too!)
Call them up from my area then – hunting’s very popular here. The population is still getting way out of control. Deer culls are are a good idea, but too many “oh, don’t hurt poor widdle Bambi!” idiots are protesting them, and they have to be done outside of deer season. (The meat gets donated to homeless shelters and food banks, which is a great idea)
Western PA, ticks win by a mile. I know many people who have experienced tick-borne disease, nobody has gotten anything but itchy from mosquitos.
In the Northeast, ticks of course. Lyme disease is the most common vector-borne disease in the USA by a WIDE margin.
Of course you’re not going to die from Lyme, and its treatable with antibiotics.
Grew up in the woods of southern Vermont. Mosquito bites were just kind of a fact of living there. Annoying, but not cause for concern. Ticks, on the other hand, were serious business - if you were going somewhere that might have them, you wore long pants and tall socks, and you checked yourself for them when you came back inside.
My aunt is, essentially, dying from Lyme disease. At least that’s the story I get from my parents. She lives in California, but her husband is from Massachusetts and several years ago they had returned from visiting his family when she started developing signs of illness: joint pain, overall aches and stiffness, general fatigue. Symptoms vague enough that the California doctors - not experienced in identifying Lyme disease - struggled for months to diagnose her. By the time they identified it, she was experiencing cognitive and speech problems. Today, long term Lyme disease has left her unable to walk or speak, with constant nerve and joint pain.
Check for ticks, people!
In the Northeast, ticks are now the bigger concern. I can think of at least friends/colleagues who have gotten Lyme Disease with permanent consequences (one nearly fatal, and compromised fertility; another had an inability to wink - which is a humorous disability, if you ask me).
Going back 15-20 years ago, mosquitos were enough of a problem (West Nile virus) that the city started spraying all over the place. Enough so that, while I lived there, I got “bugged” by bugs when I’d head out into the areas where there were still flying insects.
I guess the real answer comes down to is “it depends.”
Wouldn’t it be the same anywhere in the lower 48? Ticks win over mosquitoes. Lyme disease, once thought to be “an East Coast thing” is cropping up with alarming frequency in CA.
Let’s see now, going back… holy crap… it’s been over 30 years, our friends moved to CA with their daughter from New York. They lived on the edge of a large woods and there were plenty of deer there. Lyme was known to them, but the symptoms weren’t all that well reported yet. They told us their daughter had been diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis. We let them know that Lyme disease produced those same symptoms, and luckily that’s what she had. But the doctors there hadn’t heard of it at all at the time. And holy crap again, that little girl must be nearly 40 by now. I am too freakin’ old if I know 40 year olds who I met right after they were born.
Plus a bonus wacky theory (but not that wacky): I think OJ had Lyme disease. He was a spokesman for Victronix with their headquarters in CT that he visited often. He was reported to have rheumatoid arthritis, but didn’t seem to be debilitated by it after his acquittal, and he did receive some unspecified medical care while being held for trial. Psychotic episodes have been related to untreated Lyme disease.