this post was submitted on 01 Oct 2023
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As we've seen worldwide, I'm not sure how well turning a public health problem into a political issue will work out. No matter your political slant, politicians just aren't the solution to public health issues, as much as they're needed to administer the legal solutions.
As well as the fact that bedbugs are spreading more and faster due to climate change since they thrive in warmer environments. This problem has been growing and will continue to grow. I worry about when it reaches my own city.
Solutions for such a wide outbreak are scarce, but viable solutions I think would come from the scientific community about effective treatments and long-term changes to keep them at bay. However, as we've seen with COVID, there will be a number who will resist efforts to control the pests as some form of social control, infringing on their right to be scruffy bastards, I suppose.
I do wish Paris the best in finding a long-term viable solution to this, it's a terribly difficult problem to be facing. Especially with intent to host an Olympic games.
The assumption that you could ever treat such a crisis as "apolitical" requires the existing power structures to not be designed to literally kill off whole segments of the population (poor people, disabled people, old people, immigrants, anyone defined by capitalism as "burdens").
It's political because they won't act (like they haven't so far) until it threatens the economy they depend on to maintain their power and/or rich households, at which point their solutions will only ever be in defence and service of those things, not the general population.
So sure, in utopia it wouldn't be political and the obvious thing would be that we help society and everyone in it, but that's not the reality we live in, and those in power aren't going to just put their entire ethos to one side to do the right thing, and expecting them to, at this point in time, and especially fresh out of a pandemic that isn't actually over, is extremely naive, at best.
Public health cannot help but be a political matter, I don't see how it could be otherwise.
Unless you tent and fumigate the entirety of Paris or heat treat it, meaning bringing the temperature of Paris to ~118° for 90 minutes, the other options are...middling in effectiveness.
Also, neither of those treatments keep bedbugs from reinfesting a second after the treatment concludes. (There are no treatments that do. Zero. Ziltch.) And since bedbugs are hitchhikers that can also hide in the tiniest of cracks and crevices, such as fitting between your wall and socket cover, total and permanent eradication is unlikely. The only possibility is if a bait treatment similar to those used for roaches that alters the DNA of the next generation so they can't reproduce is created and actually attracts bedbugs more than a nice blood filled human.
In dense population centers like Paris total elimination at this point in time is incredibly unlikely. They could with continuous effective treatments bring it under a semblance of control but they will always be there. The Olympics will almost certainly exacerbate the issue.
Ah, so global warming will take care of the problem for us! Finally some good news. /s
Let's hope they dont turn violent, like the Krogan after the genophage.
Nice reference
There’s no other solution than to treat them the way we did the first time — with DDT.
Bedbug populations are not necessarily increasing but returning to normal pre-DDT levels.
There’s btw no reason not to use DDT. The cancer fear was overblown. Obviously it’s not a substance that should be available over the counter, but there’s no reason why qualified and trained personell shouldn’t be able to use it.
Sorry Hoss, but DDT doesn't work anymore. http://npic.orst.edu/factsheets/bb-ddt.html
If that is true then the only recourse will be antiparasitic drugs. Ivermectin seems to kill bedbugs but not for very long. Fluralaner seems promising.
It’s very interesting that when we treat animals for parasites we treat the animal itself but for humans we believe that something as nebulous as “treating the space” is actually possible.
When the world is ready to actual solve bedbugs it’ll solve them through a pill you take.
I agree. To think that all those suffering Lyme might not have contracted the disease if we had continued offering a Lyme vaccine...
I've been thinking about this and it seems developed and developing countries have some kind of an ideological thing against ectoparasitic medications. There's a common delusion that stuff like lice, fleas, bedbugs, etc, are very rare because everything and everyone is so clean these days.
But it's not really true. All these parasites circulate, especially now that people travel so much for business and pleasure. Also, none of these parasites really care how clean your body and your house are, all they "care" about is drinking your blood.
I really think if we could get over this wrong idea, and we could start actual government-funded research into effective and safe ectoparasitic drugs for human use, we'd stand a much better chance at ending bedgbugs and other stuff once for all. Environmental treatments have been proven ineffective time and time again. They work for a while and then the bugs develop resistance. We need a way to make our blood unpalatable to them.
How is it even possible for a public health problem to not be a political issue?
keep that pesky politics out of the public health crises!