Heres a Q and a thought to ponder... « Got Bed Bugs? Bedbugger Forums

Got Bed Bugs? Bedbugger Forums » Reader questions (do not fit into other categories)

Heres a Q and a thought to ponder...

(9 posts)

Started 5 years ago by completelybuggedout
Latest reply from fightorflight
Related Topics:

completelybuggedout

junior member
Joined: Feb '08
Posts: 100
offline

Posted 5 years ago
Mon Mar 3 2008 8:58:15
#

Login to Send PM

Does anyone out there know when exactly bedbugs started surfacing again in the US? I have seen a few references to the earley 90's, but I am not sure, is anyone else? It stands in my mind to reason with only having located the above mentioned information that (call me a conspiracy theorist if you wish:)) that this all seems to have resurfaced with the Gulf War. Which would lead me also to believe that the government may in fact have something to do with it, in turn explaining why they are so lax in attempting to acquire an effective erradication process. I am going to do a lot more diving into this thought which just occured to me this morning and post any findings. I would like others thought on this if anyone has any! Good Monday morning to you all and may you have a fruitful day of erradication!
completelybuggedout

junior member
Joined: Feb '08
Posts: 100
offline

Posted 5 years ago
Mon Mar 3 2008 9:32:01
#

Login to Send PM

Well thus far just in my glancing it appears that the whole hoopla of bb resurfacing due to the increase in international travel to and from the U.S. seems to be a bunch of bologna. Statistics are showing a decline of 11 to 19 percent of international travelers in the past 5 years and that is when these bugs really started to show their ugly little faces. Ironic in fact is that this all started to really become an issue after we went into Iraq hmmmmmmmmmm????????? Go figure we are being lied to...AGAIN and STILL by our wonderful elected officials!
St.BarthsBites

junior member
Joined: Jan '08
Posts: 48
offline

Posted 5 years ago
Mon Mar 3 2008 10:23:04
#

Login to Send PM

I have many times discussed this theory with my father (who is a former Washington insider.) He doesn't think so but I do. It sure is a low cost way to terrorize the western world.
LastMeal

newbite
Joined: Jan '08
Posts: 34
offline

Posted 5 years ago
Mon Mar 3 2008 10:32:31
#

Login to Send PM

Can you clue us in to some of your references? We need international travel stats and BB sighting stats(not sure how accurate that one could possibly be)
bugbasher

senior member
Joined: Dec '07
Posts: 543
offline

Posted 5 years ago
Mon Mar 3 2008 10:38:48
#

Login to Send PM

Guys,
Hold on a minute.Don't forget the population never died off completely here in the US.They were in poultry farms in the midwest,happily (or apperently not so happily) dining on chickens.
completelybuggedout

junior member
Joined: Feb '08
Posts: 100
offline

Posted 5 years ago
Mon Mar 3 2008 10:50:48
#

Login to Send PM

Lm I will try to get back to the site that I found those figures on shortly and let you know, bb I know they were never completly gone, but you have to at least give some thought as to the sudden outbreak where thousands and thousands of people are being affected in the states at the exact same time. Whereas in the past there were not that many cases...to the point where a large majority of todays population never thought that bb's were anything more than a fictious bug named in a childhood nursery rhyme. I just want to know how a very few cases of bb in the past have become a wide spread epidemic within the U.S. in just a few short years. I know these things reproduce worse than cockroaches, but there seems to be more homes with bb than cockroaches these days as if roaches weren't bad enough to contend with. I also say my above comment living in Cincinnati where the supposed city government is "attempting" to do something about the problem. I think it is a farse because while I had the health inspector come to my house, they haven't done a thing to help except jot my residence down in a ledger with hundreds of others with bedbugs. Sure they are tracking the cases, but that seems to be all they are doing.
Blue_Ox

member
Joined: May '07
Posts: 171
offline

Posted 5 years ago
Mon Mar 3 2008 13:06:11
#

Login to Send PM

I am fairly certain I encountered bedbugs in France in 1999.

Re: the comment about "the western world". What makes you think that bedbugs are not in other places besides "the western world"? The only places I can think of where they will not flourish as easily are in places like Iraq, where during the hot seasons, temperatures outside reach 140 degrees. Of course they can survive pretty easily the rest of the year when the weather is cooler. I heard from a friend who lived there that one time there was what he thought was rampant bedbug infestations, but that once the summer temps rolled around, all were eradicated. (kind of like having your own open air clothes dryer!!)

And if you really want to get going with your conspiracy theories, then maybe the people who are getting them are actually getting them via bedbug eggs that are enclosed with those junk-mail credit card offers we get every day!! (kind of like those anthrax mailings!).

I, for one, don't believe the conspiracy theories on how they "came back". However, there sure doesn't seem to be much action to help people get rid of them once they are here.
Anonymous

Unregistered

Posts: 1,455
offline

Posted 5 years ago
Mon Mar 3 2008 13:35:24
#

Login to Send PM

I have looked at this extensively, primarily because some of the arguments and conclusions that derive from certain assertions about the genesis of our bedbug problems are offensive to me and injurious to what I consider to be the best interests of all bedbug sufferers, because they further stigmatize people with bedbugs.

I can assure you that I have found bedbugs in every single decade, including those decades that are purported to be bedbug-free nirvanas brought about by the widespread use of synthetic pesticides.

Bedbugs were perhaps uncommon, to be sure. But, here's the thing, for some people, they were not uncommon at all. Just because you and I did not have bedbugs 10, 20 or 30 years ago, does not mean that bedbugs were unknown. There were people who suffered from them. No question. Statistics, for the US at least, quite obviously are unavailable. Bedbugs were not and still are not reportable pests. So you have to dig through newspapers and other sources to get an idea, but sources from other countries that did keep statistics, if haphazardly, illuminate just how and why we are in the mess we are in now.

I have written about this subject here: http://bedbugger.com/2008/01/09/extent-of-bed-bug-problem/

There is also, of course, like bugbasher reminds us, the whole thing with the chickens: http://bedbugger.com/2007/08/20/texas-a-and-m-researchers-chickens-and-bed-bugs/
fightorflight

senior member
Joined: Jan '08
Posts: 694
offline

Posted 5 years ago
Mon Mar 3 2008 23:05:24
#

Login to Send PM

To me, a cursory hypothesis would suggest that the biological diabolicness of the bugs (opportune travelers, rapid mutaters and perhaps most importantly, highly prolific breeders) combined with less effective pesticides and methods of application (no longer spraying baseboards regularly) in the last 40 or so years have brought us to a situation where we may be on our way toward critical mass. I am not a scientist or statistician, but I believe that given their rate of multiplication and lack of constraints, a modeling graph that shows predicted rate of spread would start with a slow increase and then spike up sharply in a backwards "L".

I think a factor in this question would be that a lot of housing stock, public transportation vehicles, moving trucks, etc. were built new and BB-free after bedbugs were brought under relative control here in the second half of the century. So, the existing pockets and resistant strains of bugs began to multiply slowly at first in a less toxic environment and then, according to their breeding and traveling habits, began to spread much more quickly due to not-quite-exponential breeding patterns.

Hardly scientific, but you get my point.

Oh and my first exposure to bedbugs was in 1999 when I stayed on a friend's futon couch for a week in an old apt building in New York City. Not knowing anything about BBs at the time, except that he had them, I was very lucky that all my clothes and luggage were kept in the foyer about 30 feet away.