New York vs Bed Bugs » New York vs Bed Bugs

January 18: bed bug panel at the Museum of the City of New York

Renee Corea — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 17:48:48 +0000

Brief notes here.

There is a bed bug event in NYC in January! The Museum of the City of New York is hosting a panel — please see their announcement below. I am very pleased to be able to join Lou in participating in this public conversation about bed bugs in our city. The museum is offering a discount as noted below when you mention New York vs Bed Bugs. The discount is available when reserving by phone, not through the online reservation system. As details become available about the other panelists, I will update this post.

Final update 1/14/11: Program description with final panel revised below. Note the NY Entomological Society’s monthly meeting announcement about this event and a separate community bed bug forum also taking place on January 18.

Tuesday, January 18, 2011 at 6:30 p.m.

Plague! Bed Bugs: Myths and Realities

Bed bugs, it seems, are all over New York City. In your mattress, your couch, that futon in the free pile at the end of your block. What is worse, they may have overrun your newspapers and even your TV screen. What’s hype and what’s reality? How big a problem are bed bugs, really? What is the city doing to stop them, and what can you do before they take over your apartment? Moderator Dr. Amy L. Fairchild, Center for the History and Ethics of Public Health, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, heads a discussion that includes entomologist Louis Sorkin of the New York Entomological Society; Gale A. Brewer Council Member from District 6; Renee Corea, former Director of New York vs Bed Bugs; David Cain, Managing Director of Bed Bugs Ltd, London; Yasmine Hecker, CEO of Prep 4 Bed Bugs, and Ray Lopez, Little Sisters of Assumption Family Health Service of how the recent plague of bed bugs is affecting city life and culture. Co-sponsored by the New York Entomological Society.

Reservations required: 917-492-3395 or e-mail programs@mcny.org.
$6 museum members; $8 seniors and students; $12 non-members
$6 when you mention New York vs Bed Bugs

Museum of the City of New York
1220 Fifth Avenue at 103rd Street
New York, NY 10029
www.mcny.org
212-534-1672

Small public meeting in January, interested?

Renee Corea — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 22:34:52 +0000

David Cain will be in New York City again in mid-January. We’re thinking of holding another small public meeting.

If you would be interested in attending, please get in touch via email (renee at newyorkvsbedbugs dot org) — so that we can plan a specialized topic to discuss and other details.

The last meeting was very informal and we mostly chatted about everything, but David discussed certain interesting infestation dynamics in buildings and neighborhoods.

You can see a lighthearted set of photographs of his visit here.

David Cain in NYC

Renee Corea — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 11:12:40 +0000

Back to school

David Cain came to New York in September and allowed himself to be made a fuss over.

You can see the pictures here. He got a tattoo, courtesy of Lou Sorkin’s wards.

David is notoriously reluctant to speak about his bed bug control practice, so it’s always interesting when he decides to share.

NYvsBB will be back, for a bit

Renee Corea — Sun, 14 Nov 2010 17:58:56 +0000

I’m working on a new project and will be writing here again.

This new iteration of the blog will update once a week or so and last perhaps a couple of months (repeatedly ending this blog is a subspecialty of the site itself).

I was going to start a new site for this new project, but that is just more work and clutter. You’ve heard about bed bugs and clutter?

Best wishes…

Renee Corea — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 15:35:50 +0000

Slight change of plans. This week is the last week of New York vs Bed Bugs.

So then, just a couple of posts to wrap up.

First up, Girault. I’ve been meaning to tell you about him for some time and I also really want to make amends to a good friend of New York vs Bed Bugs—someone who works closely, let’s say, with certain captured elements of the enemy—who told me about a bed bug encounter once and received this response from me: yeah, but did you take notes like Girault?

May you always keep clear of the dread bed bug.

Silly red circles on a chart

Renee Corea — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 07:52:07 +0000

I made this logic tree (PDF) a while back to try to figure out all possible solutions. (Because I read a book! A great book, actually, and thought I’d try its tools.)

But it’s only been 4 months and in looking at this today I find it almost painful to look at.

The only solutions that hold any promise, and they are on a scale from might never happen to don’t hold your breath, are the reintroduction of effective residual insecticides, real DIY protocols, and new technologies.

I missed the deadline to write a comment on the propoxur request because I read the NRDC (PDF) and Beyond Pesticides letters and then could not get the emotion out of my letter. Where do these people live, I wonder? (Also, I thought NRDC had NPMA on speed dial these days. Couldn’t they, I don’t know, pick up the phone and get a clue?)

Sometimes I get emails from people in other cities and I always tell them to look to the work of the Central Ohio Bed Bug Task Force, to the planning work of the Cincinnati/Hamilton County Joint Bed Bug Task Force and to all that has been achieved in Toronto.

The New York City Bed Bug Advisory Board is writing its report. It is due in little more than a month.

New York vs Bed Bugs will end its run after its release — and if it is not released, well.

I will do my best to write about all the things I wanted to write about before then.

Lou

Renee Corea — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 12:41:17 +0000

Excerpted from recent email correspondence:

—Dead of course. Can I get these from you?

—yes, but alive. I have them in small, flat boxes that are taped and in plastic ziploc bag. paper is grid of 1/4″ squares.

—I’ll bring three ziplocs in case we decide the ziplocs are better than the box.

—box is taped and in ziploc

Family night at the museum. Lou is on his way downstairs to set up but finds time for a visitor.

—I have this sealed all around with tape.

—Yeah…

—(pointing to the edge of closed plastic box inside ziploc) Otherwise first instars can escape from here.

—They can?

On the subway and crossing the street, all I could think of was, if I get run over by a bus…

He gave me a magnifying glass too.

Good bless him.

________________________

Lady #1: I don’t understand why they don’t suffocate. Why don’t they suffocate?

Lady #2: I can’t see the eggs!

New York City Bed Bug Advisory Board

Renee Corea — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 00:47:54 +0000

The members of the Bed Bug Advisory Board have been appointed and will meet this week.

The Mayor appointed Gil Bloom of Standard Pest Management, Richard Cooper of Cooper Pest Solutions, and Jody L. Gangloff-Kaufmann of the NY State IPM Program, Cornell University. The Speaker appointed Ray Lopez of Little Sisters of the Assumption Family Health Service and me.

There are various city agencies that will serve on the board, including the five agencies contemplated by the legislation, the Departments of Health and Mental Hygiene, Housing Preservation and Development, Sanitation, Consumer Affairs, and Information Technology and Telecommunications; and, in addition, the Department of Youth and Community Development and the Human Resources Administration.

I look forward to the opportunity to share in the work that lies ahead to “make specific recommendations to the mayor and council for the prevention and treatment of bed bug infestations throughout the city,” in the words of the bill creating this advisory board (PDF). Please feel free to contact me via email if you have thoughts. I look forward to hearing from you, but I am also always grateful for any comments that you can make publicly as they further the public conversation about bed bugs. We will of course share with you any news of public events in connection with this process.

New York vs Bed Bugs thanks Council Member Gale Brewer and her staff for working so long and so hard for the creation of this board and the Speaker and the Mayor for creating and convening this group to help the city adopt prudent measures to achieve control of the escalating bed bug infestations in our city.

I am overwhelmingly grateful to all of you who wrote letters or made calls or who testified in support of the City Council legislation that created this board. I hope your interest and support will now be repaid with effective policies that benefit the entire city.

All interminable things must come to an end

Renee Corea — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 22:45:08 +0000

If you are accidentally reading this, I thank you so much for your interest, and if you’ve been around since last year when we started this quixotic project, gosh you are champ and I’ve been thinking about you all this time.

Coming up next, we will take a look at some extraordinary bed bug history—consider this fair warning so that you can skip the next few days if you like. (Yes, I’ve heard about it! Sorry, but it was my special project to write about the history of bed bugs.)

And then I will focus on some of the mysteries of bed bug bites.

And then, unless perhaps one of my heretofore anonymous colleagues feels like writing for the blog, the New York vs Bed Bugs blog will be no more. I can’t say whether we succeeded or not. On the most objective measure, we failed. But we’ll see. Now I’ll hear from Jessica about using the failure word.

Writing for this blog has been extraordinarily rewarding for me. It’s been great to speak my mind about a subject that few care about, and about all the things that are wrong and should be made right. Ahem, remember always that bed bugs are freaking public health pests.

The website will remain and I hope the resources collected here will be useful to you. I will find another way to work on these bed bug issues that I care about so much.

The bed bug bites post(s) will blow your mind, I promise, but I’m also willing to entertain requests for these last few days. So go ahead and tell me all about it.

Best wishes always.

Questions

Renee Corea — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 21:18:53 +0000

We now have a brief FAQ. Feel free to contact us, but you may want to check out the FAQ.

More useful to you, I expect, will be the resources collected here.

The most frequently asked question is for recommendations. We regret that we can’t recommend pest control products or services.