Bedbugs: the Benign Menace
 

Turns out that bedbugs sorta live all over now, or so I've heard, and that they don't carry disease so it shouldn't be such a big deal after all. So what I thought was can a bug so small, contract a virus from one of it's hosts and transmit it to another and another?

That's the fear with mosquitoes in West Africa, and it doesn't really apply directly to bedbugs. Bedbugs can't fly, and so whatever disease it gets in it's system won't go very far on its own, unlike mosquitoes.

So the question I have is this:

What probability do you think is the probability of these bugs getting a bug in their system and passing it on to humanity?

IIRC yeah they can. Its just they are a lot more limited than the mosquito. A mosquito could fly a mile or two and bite its next victim. Bedbugs tend to stay in their area/building. And they're also more obvious when you get them, so they're easier to deal with (well sort of, really hard to kill and all that). I'd say they're probably no worse than ticks at spreading disease.

Man I hate disease and those sorts of bugs...I had a tick on my balls once.

I don't know about disease, but bed bugs [i]are[i] a big deal. They're nearly impossible to get rid of, and the bites itch like crazy all over your body, not to mention the psychological effect of knowing there are dozens of tiny bugs all over your body at night, causing clusters of itchy blisters.

Take it from someone who has slept in a hotel with bedbugs for just a few days: they are evil, vile creatures!

One mother, whose son was allergic to bedbug bites, found the best way to get rid of them after washing them in hot temperature. She put the bed linen into the freezer before using them.

I once worked on a research project that involved installing large boxes of air quality monitoring equipment in sample of apartments in my metro area. During one of our installations, the resident casually advised my partner to stay away from a large pile of clothing that was taking up floorspace in one of the bedrooms because they hadn't been cleared of bed bugs.

Afterward we left the apartment, I went straight home, stripped off all my clothing, threw it in the washer and took a long hot shower. I dried my clothing three times using the hottest setting. Then I got paranoid every time I felt an itch anywhere on my body.

Those fuckers are robust.
Bed Bugs

Sorry, I have mistaken dust mites as bed bugs.

Bed bugs are vicious bastards with a non-trivial bite that breed like crazy and are harder to kill than cockroaches.

Getting them basically means either giving up on everything you own made of fabric or going insane with multiple fumigations and constantly running stuff through the dryer on the hottest setting (heat being one of the very few things they're vulnerable to).

shudder, I hate parasites. And indeed bed bugs are nasty. But at least you can walk away from them. Its the ones that hide inside that I fear most...

The only surefire way to walk away from bed bugs is naked. They have a tendency to tag along in the folds of clothing. I got EXTREMELY lucky once and tracked a bed bug home from I-don't-know-where. This was before I knew about bedbugs (in fact, it's the incidence that caused me to learn about them). It bit me for a few days and I didn't know what was going on. Then, one night, I saw it crawling in the middle of the night while I was up on my computer and I killed it. I didn't recognize it at the time, so I looked up pictures of bugs on the internet to identify it and read, with horror, all about bedbugs. It must have been a single male bedbug that came from elsewhere, because it was the only bedbug that ever showed up in my room - thank goodness!

That incidence made me much more prepared - but also much more worried - when I found myself in a London hotel room with bedbugs.

Those evil creatures can last up to SIX MONTHS without feeding, so even starving them by temporarily living elsewhere isn't an option.