Drew Maciel, a shed hunter in Maine, had a grim discovery this spring: dead moose carcasses covered in ticks. In an Instagram video, he zoomed in on the clusters of arachnids nestled in every crevice. “Tell you what,” he told his followers, “I’m sick of finding dead moose.”
Maciel’s finding reflects a real crisis - up to 90 percent of moose calves tracked by scientists have been bled to death by winter ticks, driven by rising temperatures in the state. Maine has warmed 3 degrees Fahrenheit since 1985. But online, the explanation took a different turn. Comments on Maciel’s video blamed “human engineered biological warfare” and “Bill Gates,” with one post from a far-right former Belgian politician garnering 32,000 likes.
These posts are part of a wave of tick-related conspiracy theories that have racked up millions of views. In April, a self-proclaimed holistic doctor on Instagram claimed farmers in the Midwest were finding boxes of ticks dumped on their properties. The MAHA Moms Coalition, inspired by the Trump administration’s “Make America Healthy Again” agenda, reposted the claim, asking affected farmers to come forward. The theory dates to 2023, when viral posts accused Pfizer and Valneva of planting ticks to drum up demand for a Lyme disease vaccine. Another theory linked a Gates-funded research program on genetically modified cattle ticks to rising cases of red meat allergies - never mind that the allergy, Alpha-gal syndrome, is caused by the bite of a Lone Star tick, a completely different species.
Here’s what the conspiracy theorists get right: ticks are getting worse. Warmer weather is bringing them out earlier in the year across the U.S., expanding their range and extending their active season. The CDC reported that emergency room visits for tick bites in four of five geographic regions are the highest they’ve been for this time of year since 2017. Cases of anaplasmosis increased 16-fold between 2000 and 2017, babesiosis has risen roughly 10 percent year-over-year since 2015, and positive tests for alpha-gal syndrome have increased 100-fold since 2013.
Richard Ostfeld, an ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, attributes the surge to climate change. “It used to be we were pretty safe in the month of May,” he said. “Now, not so much.” He worries that the allure of online conspiracies makes it harder for people to grasp the actual, somewhat less dramatic explanation: a warming world.
It doesn’t help that the conspiracies have been legitimized by federal officials. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Secretary of Health and Human Services, has claimed Lyme disease was created as a byproduct of vaccine research and used as a military bioweapon - despite genomic evidence that the bacteria has existed in North America for at least 60,000 years. Tucker Carlson has also amplified these claims. A directive in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2026, signed by President Donald Trump, requires the Government Accountability Office to investigate whether the military weaponized ticks in the mid-20th century.
But even in the Midwest, where millions have been told boxes of ticks are being dumped on farms, evidence is scarce. Terry Hoerbert, who owns Little Brown Cow Dairy in Delavan, Illinois, said she hasn’t heard of any such packages. “You are the first to enlighten us,” she told a reporter.