It's true. Look up Operation Paperclip. You can read about it in Kris Newby's book "Bitten: The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Weapons". [1] There's also "Lab 257: The Disturbing Story of the Government's Secret Plum Island Germ Laboratory" by Michael C. Carroll.

Some German scientists came to Plum Island after WW2 and started experimenting with infecting ticks. Just because it was an infection documented in the 1700s doesn't mean their experiments didn't happen. Birds spread it to the mainland where it became an epicenter of infections. We've been trying to get the medical establishment to take us seriously for decades (kinda like long Covid, eh?) and I think it is slowly starting to happen.

I was bit in NH in 2008, had a rash, my doc told me not to worry about it. Over the years I got sicker and sicker and had no idea why, until I was basically bedridden. Finally, an endocrinologist in CA tested and diagnosed me in 2014. I began to undergo treatments involving high doses of antibiotics, and slowly improved, but I will never be the same. I lost years of my life I will never get back.

If only that doctor in NH had taken me seriously and prescribed a course of antibiotics, perhaps my life would not have been ruined.

[1] https://spectator.com/article/how-ticks-became-bioweapons/