Dan Kass, New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene Assistant Commissioner for Environmental Surveillance and Policy, on the Goddard/deShazo article:
The report “does reconfirm feelings that bed bugs are miserable creatures that make everyone’s lives worse,” said Kass. “It’s easy to get anxious about this.”
A statement like this from DOHMH was unthinkable just a few months ago.
Thank you, Mr. Kass.
Now, Mr. Mayor, Madam Speaker, respectfully, where is our bed bug advisory board?
Also of interest, DOITT provides 2008 and YTD 311 stats (these numbers are a new presentation of the complaints stats and include not only HPD complaints but the total number of 311 calls about bed bugs):
There were 22,218 calls for bed bug-related information to New York’s 311 information line in 2008, compared with 13,322 in 2006. There have been 6,128 calls in 2009 to date, said Nick Sbordone, spokesman for the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunication in New York, which oversees the service.
Interesting. Needless to say, those thousands of people who call 311 must be disappointed, as there is very little information for them. This has to change. It will change.
I do have notes on the JAMA article I’ll post this week. Turns out that there is another recent bed bug bites article that complicates matters a bit. I think we’re hardly in a position to state much about bed bug bites with any confidence. As for disease transmission, the public health importance of bed bugs does not derive from their competence as vectors. Why is this not fully understood? I’ve been thinking about this all week, and we’ll have to do a better job if we have the likes of Jerome Goddard framing the boundaries of the public health interest.
These pages may be of related interest:
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