k_bedBug_wisdom k_X_power_descriptor

See also post about heuristics bedbug heuristics:where, how many,spreading speed,weekly check

For the control freak, it is world-changing to realize that

• A) One one hand, bed bug are indeed found “all over the places on your premise” such as books, toys, electronics, wall cracks, sockets. Some of these are hard to treat.
• B) On the other hand, the statistics/heuristics tell us if you discover them early, before an infestation develops, they mostly hide on the bed and nowhere else.
• C) To defeat your tireless effort completely, bedbugs can migrate from a neighbor or be brought into your premise any time, like a Poisson process, with a lambda in the magnitude of once a year. See the story about Rex cinema. Therefore, the perfectionist practices aren’t worth the effort.

Most of the professional advice and articles (such as http://www.bedbugs.umn.edu/bed-bug-control-in-residences/laundering-bedbug-control/) try to be thorough and knowledgable so they stress (A) and talk about  airtight containers \\ treating the neighbor homes \\ heat-treat your clothes everyday \\ immediately … They see bed bugs as invisible pollutants in a clean room

However, look at the marginal cost vs marginal benefit. For a light infestation, the diminishing return is staggering —

• with 1 day (like  10 hours) of effort we could possibly achieve 80% of the benefit. See https://btv-open.dreamhosters.com/2016/04/28/bedbugs-high-chance-places-to-spray/
• with 3 days (like 30 hours) of effort we could possibly achieve 81% or 83% of the benefit
• due to (C), 100% is unrealistic.

The “effort” includes the clean-up, preparation, (before spray) protection of books + children’s items, airtight containers .., tumble-dry every clothing+linen and seal them in air-tight containers, and moving out to hotel.

Bedbugs are as invisible as asymptomatic carrriers of covid19! They have been observed on (and therefore can hide in) any plastic, wood, fabric, paper, even metal. But this line of thinking ignores the difference in likelyhood. Fabric is 100 times more likely than metal to hide bedbugs! Let’s use covid19 as illustration.

• 14D quarantine for every visitor can probably uncover 99.9% of the cases
• 21D quarantine for every visitor can probably uncover 0.05% more but look at the cost on the millions of visitors worldwide.  Marginal cost is too high and marginal benefit too low!

Singapore MOT decided to relax the strict quarantine requirement for visitors from low-risk countries such as China (even more relaxed for NewZealand) to balance the prevention and survival of aviation sector, a pillar supporting the SG economy.

On a larger scale, a government can hope to achieve more “airtight” prevention by requiring everyone including new-borns to wear medical style full gowns outside their homes, but

• at what marginal cost in enforcement and equipment?
• at what marginal benefit? It will never be 100% airtight 🙁

Several Asian countries re-imposed covid19 lockdown for a week or two, not a month or two. Marginal cost/benefit is a key consideration.

I now prefer a philosophical view — bedbugs (along with other pests and hazards) are everywhere around us so we have no choice but coexist with them in peace. We can’t eradicate them. We need pragamtic treatments rather than aiming for 100% protection for 100 years. We can’t live in clean rooms or drink only distilled water. We need to embrace the small unavoidable risks like a light infestation.

Similarly, for covid19, we need to stop asking “is the vaccin 100% protective”. We need efficient treatments because some failure in protection is inevitable.