[[Now they also advise people to wash their hands thoroughly after just handling them,]]
And that fact i think is why they are downgrading hte time needed for transmission- if you can get lyme simply by handling a tick, then it’s likely a bite from one can spread it quickly-
That was my suspicion.
While you describe the time of attachment as shrinking, I thought it was going the other way (from instant transmission out to 24 hours); I never knew they had used a 48- and 72-hour window in the past.