Most-recent common ancestor of the bacterium that causes Lyme disease was about 60,000 years ago, well before there were people in the Americas. I don't think the chipmunks were doing gain-of-function experiments.
Figure 3 from Walter et al. (2017):
doi.org/10.1038/s415...
@bgrueskin.bsky.socialRFK told Dana Bash that Lyme disease “almost certainly” came from gain of function research.
Which is utterly false. www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdi...
medpagetoday.com
Lyme Disease Did Not Come From a Secret Military Lab, Contrary to FDA Chief's Claim
Bacterium that causes it circulated long before the lab opened, decades of evidence show
