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Challenges of Prosperity: The syphilis of the wealthy

Posted November 23, 2007

“The building boom of the last couple of years has pushed ‘executive-style’ half-million-dollar McMansion developments onto every alfalfa field. Apparently, developers failed to inform the deer about their eviction. Which means that most new cases of Lyme disease these days derive from a demographic usually associated with ‘outdoor names for indoor kids’.” — J. Christoph Amberger

by J. Christoph Amberger, TFN

Baltimore — (TFN): Volunteerism, the great outdoors, elaborate meals cooked over an open fire or in Dutch ovens… and endless rides on dark highways and even darker gravel paths: There are few experiences that are more quintessentially American than the monthly camping trips my sons and their Boy Scout troop are “making me” attend.

(I put the “making me” in quotation marks because despite my ritual eye rolling and theatric remonstrations about noise levels associated with thirty to forty teenage boys, I actually quite enjoy these trips.)

Those fathers who allowed themselves to be drafted to run the program are a quite motley crew. There is a lawyer specializing in mold cases, a pharmacist, an architect, a retired cop, and a variety of doctors of all specialties.

This past weekend, we took 30 boys on a 10-mile hike in French Creek State Park in Pennsylvania. I found myself in the role of “sweeper”. This means making sure that the few pudgy stragglers do not fall too far behind, carrying the spare water and first aid kit, and every now and then shouldering the occasional extra backpack to allow a stalling scout to recuperate for a few miles.

My cohort was a doctor specializing in infectious diseases.And after seemingly endless miles of watching a few particularly out-of-shape boys drag their feet over rocks and tree trunks, we ended up chatting.

Turns out he is the leading authority on Lyme disease in our area.

According to him, the number of Lyme disease cases has been increasing in Maryland by 20% every year. It’s transfer involves deer ticks, mice, and deer — which have procreated like rabbits in the Northeast an Miod-Atlantic and are chowing down on carefully manicured suburban Maryland vegetation. The building boom of the last couple of years also has pushed “executive-style” half-million-dollar McMansion developments onto every alfalfa field.

Apparently, developers failed to inform the deer about their eviction.

Which means that most new cases of Lyme disease these days actually derive from a demographic usually associated with “outdoor names for indoor kids”: Propsperous, upper middle class people who escaped high taxation and run-down schools of the city, to provide opportunity for little Brooke, Meadow, or Willow in the suburbs.

The bacteria causing Lyme disease, by the way, is Borrealia burgdorferi, which belongs to the genus of the spirocete class… and is as such related to Treponema pallidum, which causes syphilis.

“I call it the syphilis of the wealthy,” my fellow scout sweeper said.

Who ever said said prosperity came without risk?

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Posted by J. Christoph Amberger · Filed Under Real Estate 

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