One thought I have is that lawsuits are not going to work. Jack sues Jane because he caught bedbugs from her? If so, someone else will sue Jack,  because he will pass them along. Who will Jane sue? Do I have to find someone to pin this on, in order to recoup my losses? It is a never-ending cycle.

And nobody REALLY knows where they caught this. (You think you know, but you don’t ever really know for sure.) Jack can catch it on the subway, so how can his lawyer prove his neighbor Jane gave it to him, even if he has it? It’s an epidemic and so the possibility exists that each person got it on their own.

Besides, this is a parasite anyone can catch. You do not have to do anything to get it. If someone gives you TB because they don’t take their TB meds, you can’t sue them. We may see a few such lawsuits about bedbugs, but they can’t stand up in court.

And I’ve seen estimates that between 1/3 and 1/2 of people don’t feel bed bug bites. (I don’t know if those numbers are right, but of the people I know who’ve been exposed, they seem plausible). So if even 1/3 of people don’t know they have them until they SEE one, which in my opinion means they have a lot of them and have had for some time, then they must be spreading them around. Those of us who are sensitive to bedbugs usually find out more quickly, and should be careful as soon as we know we have them. But what of those who never realize it until they’re swarming? They can’t help but spread them, ’cause they don’t know, until its too late.

Even lawsuits about responsibility for extermination are not going to work, I think. For the same reasons: in an epidemic, it can’t be proven that someone caught this from even the most obvious source.

Did I get my bed bugs from the new sofa, or the new area rug, on the subway, from the seat I sat on in a diner, in the library at a desk, from a clothes store changing room at the mall, from the moving guy’s blankets, or from the apartment I moved into?

Who do I sue?

Forgive me if I sound like flaky-New-Age-meets-screaming-lefty-socialist, but in the end, people are going to have to see we’re all part of a web, and we need to eradicate the bugs for all our sakes, because the each-man-for-himself / capitalist / survival of the fittest model does not work here.

Sure the fittest (= richest and most powerful) can afford to deal with their bedbugs better than the rest of us.

But if the weakest keep getting them, the problem will just keep coming back for the fittest too.

Instead, they have to help their neighbors. This could be the thing that makes people work together.

Or else a whole lotta rich folks are gonna be itching forever.