Peter said:

What we need is a diagnostic test for *chronic* Lyme disease, I
think. Does that exist?

In a word, "no". Do a web search for "test for chronic lyme disease"
(without the quotation marks) and look at some of the hits. With the
best tests yet developed, some patients with the disease test negative
and some patients without the disease have false positive results.

That's what I had thought. Out of a thousand people who claim Lyme Disease,
something like 10 actually have it, and 9,990 are just making it up.
Meanwhile, there are another thousand who actually have it and don't know
it.

That's why the whole issue of chronic lyme disease is so controversial.
If there were a definitive, reliable test, as there are for most
infectious diseases, there wouldn't be any controversy about whether
chronic lyme actually exists.

I'm no expert but I'm pretty sure the acute disease exists, so the chronic
disease "probably" exists. It's just that the symptoms are the same as the
symptoms of getting old, so, everyone who is a hypochondriac thinks they
have it while those who just feel aches and pains don't know they have it.

There's lots of anecdotes about the
benefits of long term antibiotic treatment and there are many well
designed, well done, double blind studies that show no statistically
significant benefit from chronic long term antibiotics.

It's a spirochete. right? Antibiotics should be able to wipe it out. I'd
have to look it up to be sure, but, it's usual that antibiotics wipe out
bacterial diseases pretty completely. Most viral diseases are wiped out
also, although some (like Herpes) linger on forever in the nerves.

But there are some studies that do show benefit. Is the benefit from
the drugs, or a placebo effect? Too many different symptoms and too
many different antibiotics, and too many variables in the population of
patients within the studies to say with certainty.

I understand. The science is beyond most people, so, they simply assume
they have Lyme Disease. Especially if they're the intuitive type who don't
need facts to base their opinions upon.