Okay, and as a medical professional with more training than an RN, I am going to have to disagree with Ms. Amrich.
Her blog entry is encouraging people to stay at home, to avoid travel, to telecommute, etc. because of THREE MRSA-associated bedbugs that were found in a hospital (a hospital with a high proportion of HIV-positive patients and intravenous drug users, nonetheless). I think that is overkill.
The microbial populations of hospitals are not representative of microbial populations in the real world. Hospitals are environments in which resistant bacteria are selected for due to heavy use of big gun antibiotics. In the real world, MRSA is much less of a concern, especially if you have a functional immune system. If you are in good health, wash your hands, and practice basic hygiene, you are probably not going to develop a MRSA infection - I have been in direct contact with patients with known MRSA dermatitis, and even I never came down with anything because I practice proper hygiene.
Here is the full-text link for the original article (it's short) from
Emerging Infectious Diseases, the CDC journal:
http://www.cdc.gov/eid/content/17/6/pdfs/10-1978.pdf
And here is a link to a much more rational critique of the EID article:
Bedbugs may carry MRSA - but don't panic yet
If you read the EID article, it doesn't even say that the MRSA was found inside the bugs. Each entire bug was crushed up and plated on culture media, so it just means that *something* on or in them was contaminated with MRSA. It does
not say that MRSA was found in saliva or ingesta or that it can be definitively transmitted by biting people.
I would argue that in the real world I would be more concerned about other bloodborne infections (hepatitis, HIV, etc.) than MRSA, and even those have not been shown to be transmitted by bedbugs.
So, yes, I am "ridiculing" this nurse who wants to replace her window screens with HEPA filters and weld her door locks shut just because a doctor in Vancouver found H-MRSA on three bedbugs in his impoverished hospital.