Bedbugs!

I truly started this as a serious thread.

I passed on my annual overnight trip due to the fear of dealing with this mess. Over the years, a few posts have mentioned lodging that "was not up to snuff" and now with everything that I'm hearning...I am very nervous about this.

MilleneumRider - - -> I don't know if you own, manage or work for a hotel, but the fact that your place is doing preventave maintanance is very re-assuring.

GoBucks - - -> Yes, we all are going to die..eventually (And not from bed-bug bites.) I just can't afford the time off from work at the start of a school year and the expense of having to fumigate the contents of my entire house just so I can get a few more laps on Phoenix and the flyers.

EnsignSmith - -- > I don't want to panic. I just want to take all the steps I can not to bring home one of these little critters.

JamesW - - -> Good Point! This is just one of those media things that I have bought into. I work at both two schools and a camp. I know how quicky lice and other critters can pass from kid to kid and class to class.

Richie Reflux said:
I passed on my annual overnight trip due to the fear of dealing with this mess. Over the years, a few posts have mentioned lodging that "was not up to snuff" and now with everything that I'm hearning...I am very nervous about this.

This is the only time you'll ever hear me say this, so mark the occasion. :)

This isn't a case of you get what you pay for in hotels.

It's spread by travelers, not by unclean or "not up to snuff" conditions. A $200 per night place is just as at risk as a $30 per night dive is. You can be as preventative as you want but if somebody comes into a room with bedbugs, there's a chance your hotel will have bedbugs. Just like it's always been.

I can't imagine in a gazillion years, postponing travel plans because of this. There's always the risk of picking up bedbugs when traveling. It's maybe marginally higher right now.

Another case of worrying about something because it's been brought to your attention.

Lord Gonchar said:
So 1 in 6 people got sick

...and some died. No biggie ::rolls eyes::

Swine Flu deaths accounted for a fraction of Flu related deaths. The standard seasonal flus killed more people and continue to kill more people every year than H1N1 did.

So yeah, no biggie. Much ado about nothing.

In that case, I wish Swine Flu upon you at a point and time in which your immune system is weakest :)

I'm totally ok with that. The odds of my dying would be less than the flu I had last winter. (Which may have very well been H1N1, who knows? Maybe I didn't die because I had H1N1 instead of a more dealy seasonal variant.)

d_port_12E said:
In that case, I wish Swine Flu upon you at a point and time in which your immune system is weakest :)

Wow? Really? That's pretty pathetic. "I wish you get some illness that could kill you because you and I have differing opinions".

You take the cake for idiot of the year award round here, IMO. Arguing and disagreement is one thing, but to actually wish that upon someone? Disgusting.

Do I really wish Gonch contracted H1N1? No. Deep breaths.

Oh is that why there is a smiley face there?

Then you should have worded it differently. Smiley or no, that came across as really childish.

I wish I had H1N1. Just for the credibility. :)

Is flu cred like street cred?

I was surrounded by it at work, as 8 different people had it. It wasn't much different than the regular flu as far as they were concerned. I was shocked I didn't get it, usually when the flu comes thru, I get it. Plus I had clients coming in coughing and telling me "Oh, I was just diagnosed with H1N1".

But it was a lot of panic about nothing. Like the bird flu.

Well, I'm sorry if you interpreted it literally. I'll wish SARS upon myself if that'll make things better.

Hope you don't like eggs.

TheMillenniumRider said:
We just walked the bedbug dog through our hotel

I guess I can tolerate the bedbug dog, but once I see the syphilis cat and leprosy armadillo being paraded around the hotel, I'm checking out. :)

John Knotts said:
Since, every time I stay anywhere other than my own bed, I spend a good 20 minutes examining my room, much to the annoyance of my friends.

I bet you bring a battery operated mini black light like I do. :)

I don't really worry about things that the media tells us we should worry about. I'll take necessary precasutions, if something is serious enough, like using condoms and sneezing into the inside of my elbow, but I don't spend my energy worrying.

I hate this thread. :)

The news story that follows the video re: the Dells accident is about bed bugs, too, coincidentally. All this talk about them is making me itchy...and a little paranoid. I hate creepy crawlies. Ick!

But on a pleasant and nostalgic note, my grandfather used to say to me at the end of every one of our visits or chats the famous phrase, "Good night, sleep tight, and don't let the bed bugs bite!" So, I think I'm safe. :)

Back to H1N1. It should have been an epidemic, but thankfully we had this little vaccine which while it was in short supply was effectively rationed to high risk individuals (health care workers, older people, pregnant people, people with chronic lung disease) that stopped it spreading every where.

I know 20 year old healthy individuals that ended up in the ICU for over a month thanks to H1N1, the threat was very real but thankfully was contained.

As for bed bugs, we have only invented one thing that effectively kills those things, and its DDT. Too bad we find bald eagles cute ;).

Touchdown said:
Back to H1N1. It should have been an epidemic, but thankfully we had this little vaccine which while it was in short supply was effectively rationed to high risk individuals (health care workers, older people, pregnant people, people with chronic lung disease) that stopped it spreading every where.

H1N1 was an epidemic, and in fact, in June of 2009, WHO declared H1N1 had become a pandemic, meaning the virus had become an epidemic on multiple continents with a worldwide distribution. It has only been within the last couple of weeks that WHO declared the pandemic no longer existed.

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/statements/2010/h1n1_vpc_20100810/en/index.html

The first wave of infection occured in the spring of 2009 with a much larger problem this past fall. The second wave of infection was already declining before the H1N1 vaccine was readily available. WHO/CDC had predicted a third wave of infection during the spring of 2010, which never happened. I suspect the vaccine was important in preventing the third wave of infection.

During the height of the second wave last fall, ~15% of all of the patient visits to my ER were because of influenza-like illness. I prescribed more Tamiflu during that 6 week period than I have in the rest of my medical career combined. The last case of H1N1 I've seen was probably last November.

In short, we dodged a bullet.