In a few short hours—Wednesday, at 2 PM, on the steps of City Hall—the Bed Bug Advisory Board will offer its “counterattack strategy,” The New York Times reported yesterday. The Board’s 39-page report will include such recommendations as:
1) a team to coordinate bedbug control efforts; 2) a “Bedbug Academy” for building managers; 3) an online resource of bedbug facts, checked by the city (presumably to counter user-generated sources of information like Bedbugregistry.com); 4) better guidelines for disposing of infested furniture and clothes, and better public education about how to handle such items; and 5) higher priority for bedbugs in housing court.
First, our city; next, the nation. According to MSNBC, bed bugs are not just the problem of dirty and/or cosmopolitan New Yorkers any longer. “Most cities have bed bug problems today,” said Michael F. Potter, a University of Kentucky entomologist. “Any place you have a lot of people, or a lot of movement of people, you have bed bugs.”
And bed bugs are “turning up in some surprising places, such as public transit, laundromats and movie theaters.”
When they have infiltrated our Victoria’s Secrets and our buses, truly there is no place safe.
