Calvin Merritt’s problems at Hillrise Apartments are pretty simple.

“Mostly bugs, roaches and all that…”

The “all that” is bed bugs. Dead ones were easy to find under Calvin’s mattress, and piles of them behind the bed. When exterminators come in to spray here, their work’s easy to see, pesticide stains run down Calvin’s walls. Calvin pays 313 dollars a month for this one bedroom…what little furniture he had was mostly pitched, because it was infested.

Calvin Merritt, Resident: “I done lost everything got here, my couch, my other chairs, all the stuff I had was new, I had to get rid of all of that.”

At the other end of the hall, Jeanette Jessie doesn’t have any bedbugs, but she worries about them just the same.

Jeanette Jessie, Resident: “They just spread them from one end of the building to the other, this is crazy, get this place cleaned up, spray it at one time and get rid of this mess.”

It sounds a bit like the Phyllis Wheatley YWCA in Washington DC, Halcyon House in Denver, and Warren Towers in East Moline, Illinois. Elderly people, disabled people, and anyone in low-income housing is being dealt a raw deal when it comes to getting rid of bed bugs. Let’s face it, bed bugs are expensive to treat. They’re also a rather sudden problem no one was expecting and no one has budgeted for.

Bed bugs are difficult to treat, too. Traditional treatments require multiple pest control visits at short intervals. Residents must prepare for treatment, which can be a lengthy process and costly too (especially for those on a fixed income).

However, make no mistake: non-aggressive treatment (treating only some of the infested units, treating at too-long intervals, or not coming as many times as needed), waiting for tenants who might be unaware they have bed bugs to report them, and not providing assistance with preparation costs and physical labor–all of these reactions from landlords and housing managers mean that bed bugs will be around longer, spread into more units, and cost much more to get rid of.

It just does not make sense on any practical level to not be aggressive, thorough, and quick to treat bed bugs in a building you are responsible for. It is simply a display of ignorance about the nature of this beast.

We can’t entirely blame landlords for this ignorance; none of us were expecting bed bugs. But we need to educate the public about the signs of bed bugs, and we need to educate professionals in all walks of life (from those who provide housing, to hospitality services, to health care, education, and on and on) about the need for a bed bug protocol which includes both proactive searching for signs of bed bugs, and swift reactions to any bed bug signs or sightings.

Too many people seem to be hoping they’ll just go away. Good luck with that. In the meantime:

Channel 12 reports,

Officials from the Cincinnati Health Department tell us they’ll soon be taking a closer look at conditions in the apartments.

I love the Cincinnati Health Department. But you knew that.

• Indianapolis Housing Authority vs. Bed Bugs
• Cincinnati Establishes Bed Bug Furniture Pick-Up Procedures and Hotline
• Harrisburg, Pennsylvania Housing Authority vs. Bed Bugs
• Cincinnati fights bed bugs, declares some success

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The article describes research at the University of Sheffield (England), where Klaus Reinhardt and colleagues are studying the creatures.

Reinhardt and his colleagues investigated remote and dangerous bat caves in East Africa for the bloodsucking African bat bug (Afrocimex constrictus), a close relative of the bed bug. The bats were reportedly hosts for Ebola and other lethal viruses.

“We had to work in containment suits with full-faced respirators in sweltering temperatures for hours at end,” Reinhardt said.

What’s wrong with America today, as per this post’s subtitle, is that after dropping the E-bomb, the article goes on to obsess about how the male African bat bugs have a whole ‘nother set of genitalia–fake female parts, as it were.

Um, hello! Who cares?!? You just told me that a close relative of the bed bug is feeding on a mammal that carries the Ebola virus.

And just how, exactly, does this affect our current perceptions of the potential health dangers of the African bat bug’s close relative, Cimex Lectularius? The insect we’re told repeatedly does not transmit any known pathogens?

It does not bode well. Sure, they are not known to transmit pathogens now, but neither did North American mosquitoes a few years ago.

Yes, yes. I know that carrying a pathogen is not the same as spreading it. And I am the first one to say, “don’t panic.”

But I also lived in NYC when they started dropping planeloads of pesticide to kill mosquitoes with West Nile.

Listen, scientific research community, stop looking at insect nasty parts and do something to create some bed bug weapons of mass destruction, because I am seriously freaked out right now.

Thank You.

Oh, and yes, this sort of hysteria is exactly what I get for reading an article in Fox News online.

But the google alert spit it up, so what is a girl to do? Oh, and now can we be Best Health Blog? Please?

• Promising new research re: CO2
• close up of bed bugs on mattress
• A Few Comments About Peterborough
• Bedbugs in the news today: Peterborough, England

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