Just 10 months before the opening of the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics, the French capital is battling an invasion of bedbugs.
The tiny pests were first reported in hotels and vacation rental apartments across the city during the summer. Then there were sightings in movie theaters and, in recent days, there have even been reports of bedbugs crawling around on seats in both national high-speed trains and the Paris Metro system.
One metro train driver was dismayed to find some of the unwelcome guests in his driver’s cabin.
Man with bedbugs PTSD here. Let me tell you what will happen if you notice bedbugs at your place :
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You will call a company to get rid of it
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They will tell you that they can’t come in less than 2 weeks and that they will charge you 400€ min. Deal with your itches until then, sleep well.
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The company will tell you their prerequisites, usually : get rid of ALL your fabric/clothes and wash it at 60°c or freeze it for 4 days at -20°c
I assure you that you never know how much fabric/clothes you have before you have to wash it ALL of it. My SO and i had forty 100L garbage bag of fucking stuff. The garbage bags are here for storage but also to keep your clothes and fabric sealed, to avoid the fuckers to either get away or get in. It will cost you money, you will lose time and about half your clothes thanks to the hot temp and shrinking.
If the infestation is too big, you will also have to fucking freeze your books if you have some (they can hide between pages), throw away your mattress and eventually your bed.
Also, the company will come at your place at least 2 times, best is 3, with a week interval. So during 2 to 3 weeks you will live among garbage bags, breathe insecticide for weeks, and eventually repeat the process in a few months cause one bedbug escaped and was hosted by your neighbor. Good luck to you ! (be brave)
Ps : if you have animals, you will also have to deal with them during 5h the day the company is at your place. Spoiler : that will cost you days off and about 1000€ in total.
[edit] typos, formatting and adding ps
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deleted by creator
You’ve obviously never had to deal with bed bugs.
Fuck off.deleted by creator
I am nice. Bed bugs are not nice.
The video this person linked to advocates to “simply” wrap your bed and all of your clothes in plastic for a year.
How is that something that’s not horrible?These bugs will ruin your sleep, your health, and your home, along with anyone else’s home they catch a ride on, and do cause PTSD. Downplaying them is stupid.
Anyone whose dealt with a bad bedbug infestation can tell you just how horrible they really are. If you don’t deal with them quickly they infect every non-hard surface in your home. You usually have to vacate your home and leave extreme heaters running for an entire 24-48 hours to get rid of them and even that is not a guarantee. I had drenched my entire room in chemical killer and literal hundreds crawled up onto the walls to get away. Fucking terrifying and disgusting. I don’t let people in my house anymore if I don’t know where you’ve been.
As someone who worked as a caseworker for adults living in various residential care facilities (RCFs) and assisted living facilities (ALFs), some infestations absolutely require professional intervention…
I’ve watched some facilities try to tackle them on their own with every home remedy, failing and just allowing more residents to suffer. I’ve hotlined facilities for their failure to manage and properly treat bed bugs.
I’m not saying it can’t be done, but I have yet to see home remedies or heat treating rooms actually solve an infestation. All I saw was one room get marginally better while another room or two had them grow in numbers.
I luckily managed to dodge bringing them home all those years. Some of my team members weren’t so lucky, and they had a hell of a time and spent thousands of dollars to eradicate them. One team member brought them to her house twice…
I greatly feared bringing those little bastards home, and that fear was warranted.
Wait, you’re saying heat treating isn’t effective? I thought that was the most effective method.
I’m saying it may not cut it and it can still be a real battle. Those things a pain in the ass to get rid of… One RCF I worked with literally just shut down one of their facilities because I kept getting them in trouble with DHSS and DMH for not adequately treating the bed bugs. I had a client so covered in bites I raised so much hell… They were using the heat treatment and they just couldn’t get rid of them doing it themselves instead of hiring professionals, which are expensive. This sort of situation was all too common in my region.
I’m not an expert on bed bug removal. I’m just saying the fear surrounding bed bug infestations is not unfounded. And I’m just offering skepticism of simple home treatment from what I witnessed at that job. The idea that you don’t need to hire professionals just doesn’t align with what I witnessed or my team member’s home infestations.
nobody knows your a bed bug on the internet
Sleep tight, don’t let @[email protected] bite
16:20 timestamp - For just the effective remedies.
So after charging outrageous prices and general rudeness to people who happen not to speak Fench (while still bringing in loads of money), they now try bed bugs as a tourist repellent strategy. Maybe it works this time.
Formaldehyd the entire city!
The New Puce.
Having lived through a bedbugs pandemic, this shit is more serious than COVID. It’s impossible to get rid of them except burning all your possessions and changing apartments. As someone who reside a train ride away from Paris, I demand border control now.
On behalf of Europe, I’d like to thank the US for this gift.
Hate to burst your bubble but per the Center for Invasive Species “they are thought to have originated in Europe, the Middle East or in India, but moved across the world as humans did.”
But … but the US makes such a good scapegoat!
The paper adds that DisneyLand Paris is regularly infested with bedbugs, noting that the tourist hotspot is hugely popular with… you guessed it, Americans.
https://www.thelocal.fr/20170413/are-american-tourists-behind-the-bed-bug-explosion-in-paris
A) Your source is behind a paywall, so I can’t read it.
B) So Disney Land Paris is ONLY popular with Americans? Because if you honestly think that the reason Disney Land gets bedbugs is because Americans visit it, you might be a moron. Just because it is popular with Americans doesn’t mean that no other countries visit it.
In fact, let’s look at the numbers: in 2016, 49% of visitors to DL Paris were from France, 17% from the UK, 9% from Spain, and going down through Europe. The rest of the world (U.S. included) is only 9% of the visitors. In 2011, the numbers were 51% France, 12% UK, 9% Spain, and going down through Europe, with the rest of the world (US included) being 9%. I can’t find any newer numbers than 2016, but if the percentages are almost identical from 2011 to 2016, then I’m guessing they are similar for 2023. So the entire premise of your argument that DL Paris gets bedbugs because of less than 10% of its tourists is so unbelievably stupid that I don’t even know where to go from here.
I’d like to know why the fuck Americans are traveling to Paris to go to Disneyland. We have two perfectly good Disney theme parks in the US. Why not go to France and enjoy French things??
Edit: OP is an idiot. Another commenter determined that less than 10% of visitors to Disneyland France are American.
Wait until you find out where the US came from…
Miss
Wait, why?
He thinks bed bugs originated in the new world. (They’ve been present in Europe for 900+ years.)
You can downvote me all you want, but the French think the same: https://www.thelocal.fr/20170413/are-american-tourists-behind-the-bed-bug-explosion-in-paris
I like how that article has zero data, just a couple anecdotes from French people who don’t seem to like America.
French people who don’t seem to like America.
So basically all of them?
Source: the fr*nch
The audacity
