It is highly likely that the recent invasion of bedbugs was caused by biological terrorism. With no way of extermination there will be thousands of bedbugs in every mattress. Rather than spend endless nights of being bitten up, millions will commit suicide. The only survivors will be those that require no sleep.

Like everything else people start panicking. The herd mentality demands it. Think rationally and do preventative stuff. So here's a few things.

Examine your body. Do you have bites? Bed bugs usually don't suck blood every day. Do you have new bites every few days? No? You don't have bed bugs. Are there blood spots on your sheets. Examine. Examine. Eggs look like poppy seeds.

You may feel itchy all the time at the suggestion of bed bugs but it's not from bed bugs. Most people can't feel them on their bodies. The bites itch later. BTW other insects bite too.

Bed bugs die in heat over 120 degrees. Put your clothes through the dryer on high after washing.

BTW you're going to have to spend some money for preventative care. Avoid chemicals though.

Get bed bug protecters for all your mattresses and pillows. If you have bugs in them they can't come out and they'll die eventually. And they can't get in. It takes a good year before bed bugs will die from starvation.

Keep things off the bed especially luggage, coats etc.

Bed bugs BTW usually don't travel more than 10 -15 feet from their hosts.

Put a stripe of petroleum jelly around the legs of your bed. (This works in hotels too) They can't get through. Also two sided tape works.

Do a lot of cleaning and vacuuming. Get a portable steam fabric cleaner and steam clean all of your furniture. Especially steam cracks in wood.

Don't sit on MTA benches or park benches.

Be vigilant. Or don't. It's up to you but don't complain if you do nothing and get bed bugs.

At some point, businesses and landlords and municipal authorities are going to have to become more bedbug-proactive. If we don't want to coat the city in carcinogenic insecticides, we're going to have to mandate routine inspections and treatment. Bedbugs are like a municipal STD. You have to take reasonable precautions, get tested anyway, and then seek treatment when necessary. That's how you combat an epidemic.

All valid points and ideas but we can't implement them without leadership and Bloomberg refuses to even acknowledge that there's a problem in this city.

Bloomberg has totally ignored the bedbug epidemic and left citizens and businesses to try to deal with it on their own but this is a public issue requiring a systematic concert effort if we're going to tackle it and apparently Bloomberg refuses to deal with.

It seems that Bloomberg is scared that talking about it might scare off some tourists and he also knows that things we must do to combat this epidemic will cost his rich real estate developer and landlord friends money.

Bloomberg's irresponsible approach has not only cost NYers millions in new bedding, furniture, fumigation, etc but has also made the problem much worst.

When bedbugs mate, they do so by “traumatic insemination.” As the female lacks a genital opening, the male pierces her abdomen with his hypodermic genitalia to leave his sperm in her abdominal cavity. And because male bedbugs don’t discriminate between partners, they will climb on top of the nearest comrade — be it male or sexually immature. In these situations, they fatally wound the unsuspecting recipient of their amorous advances.

I could not have imagined this kind of behavior even if I were trying to write a monster/porn movie script.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MakIB_IJnu0

Wow! Rosellini manages to put eroticism into horrifying biology. I'd say that she's talented; wacky, but talented.

Team Bedbugs. Bite that DA Cy Vance who lets off the animal abusers with a slap on their wrists.

YOU ARE PSYCHO. You are blaming Cy Vance for the 'animal abuser' posting bail?

YOU'RE FUCKING CRAZY!

I'm always puzzled when mangers don't do whatever they can to wipe the bedbugs out as quickly as possible.

Everyone I know is totally freaked out by this thing. I've had discussions with friends about whether or not we'd let each other crash at our places if someone got infested.

On one hand, the idea of sleeping in your bed once the bugs are there is super creepy. But on the other hand, letting someone who you know has bedbugs come to your place, along with some of their clothes, seems to be crazy.

But the idea of these bugs burrowing in your bed, infesting your clothes, and biting you while you sleep is so creepy to just about everyone in the world, that you'd think landlords and managers of businesses would take it seriously.