Hard to guess where to put this, so I'll broach it here and not be surprised if it gets moved. I was just checking stories on zdnet.com and found one about "another reason not to travel". It was the zdnet health column, written by a nurse, and it said that travelers are picking up deadly hitchhikers. They are the ubiquitously yucky bedbugs that are showing up in hotel rooms. But these particular ones have the bacterial disease for which there is no effective antibiotic. The nurse offers some possible countermeasures, but she says she doesn't want to leave home till this problem is solved.
Another Reason Not To Travel

They are out there for sure but they are by no means "ubiquitous", otherwise I'm sure folks at this web site - who do travel a bit - would be talking about them a lot more.

My mom is living proof that there are effective antibiotics for MRSA. It's not at all simple, but it does work.

Where are these bed bugs located?

Is the nurse saying travelling anywhere is dangerous?

There are more germs on your phone at work than in a hotel room.

Every week there is a new health crisis / epidemic. I guess this week it's KILLER BED BUGS!!!!! I now await a congresscritter to propose a law that will mandate every hotel spend $10M on eradicating KILLER BED BUGS or be shut down by the FDA.

Okay, good, someone is thinking rationally here.

These "OMG MRSA" bedbugs were found in a hospital. Resistant bacteria are much more prevalent in hospital situations than in the real world; even so, healthy people carry MRSA, too. Yeah, it's gross to think about, but for your average Joe staying in a hotel room, it's probably not an issue.

This nurse is overreacting.

In other news, OMG! Rat fleas can give you THE PLAGUE! Let's wage a war on rats! Nobody should ever use a subway to travel ever again! Never leave your house!

There are many people who have survived MRSA. It's not like there isn't anything they can ever do about it.

Bedbugs will bite people, just like rats, mosquitoes, fleas, ticks, etc. If they happen to catch something from that person, or a tick bites a chipmunk infected with Lyme Disease and then bites a person, they will pass that along.

It's just a bit crazy for a nurse to lock her self up over it, but I'm also glad should something happen to me she'll be locked in her plastic bubble and not treating me.

Thanks..

I was also inquiring because I'm oriental, and seem to be bitten by bed bugs lots the last time we visited the Riviera Maya.

We are staying at a different hotel this time coming up, so hopefully will not be an issue.

But yeah.. I got welts all over my body, even though we changed rooms 4 times. Need to keep the AC temp low to minimize the creatures.

Never a problem in Hawaii though.^

At the risk of sharing too much information, I am colonised with MRSA. As are about 60% of my colleagues.

Chicken licken might let this keep her at home, but I will continue to travel, knowing I might contract malaria, hepatitis A, dengue, E coli, or Ross river virus.

People need to calm down about MRSA. Do you realize how many people are colonized by MRSA and have no signs of being infected? Walk into any tertiary care hospital and see how many patient rooms have contact precaution signs on the doors. At my hospital, which is one of the top academic medical centers in the US, we screen every patient (for carrier status) admitted to the hospital using PCR of their nasal secretions. I have been working with MRSA carriers for years now and I have had no problem. I am sure that at this point I am colonized. There are quite a few antibiotics that are still effective against MRSA. You just need to worry about the bugs that are resistant to vanc/zosyn/daptomycin/linezolid/meropenem. The bugs that are resistant to all of those are so incredibly rare that you don't need to worry about them unless you are working in a large tertiary hospital where they use tons of those antibiotics, such as is common on Heme/Onc/BMT units.

Maybe TSA should start screening for foreign colonizations..

Is there such a device on the market?

http://www.mdguidelines.com/methicil...mrsa/prognosis

I think this is another case where a totally casual, even ostrichlike, attitude has exacerbated a situation. You can see some of the shades right here. Fact is that all sorts of things are being spread by travel and commerce because so many parties are utterly resistant to any form of warning. The whole point of information is to allow for an adaptive response. But in some parts of the world, adapatation has come to be viewed as oppression, leading to protest, rather than any effective action. This is why there are so many '... situations" where you wonder how any intelligent person could end up in some sort of trouble. Followed, naturally, by the search for someone else to blame. Here, the response is to ridicule a nurse. I suppose those who reach first for ridicule will also be those who ridicule the State Department for its warnings.

Here's an analogy. Not everyone who texts while driving kills someone. But some do. To look at the nonlethal cases as proof that warnings against texting are ridiculous is ridiculous itself. Some people who smoke live past the average lifespan, too, but a lot end up unable to breathe on their own. A word to the wise is sufficient. But to the unwise it is hysteria.

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.

I agree.

This bedbug-MRSA scare is just one of the over-hyped alarms typical of the climate of fear we seem to live in.

Bedbugs, MRSA, swine flu, SARS, radiation from Japan, terrorists - all these dangers are grossly exaggerated by the media.

It's a wonder anyone dares to go outside their own front door.

That's from one of your links. I do wonder why bedbugs are popping up everywhere. I've certainly heard of them in my considerable lifespan, but the stories in recent months aren't consistent with what I've heard. Does it have something to do with more and more aviation connections? Have we, in effect, opened up channels for pests and disease to travel that nature had kept closed?

I do think that article is fear-hyping, but OTOH, if the fear of MRSA-infected bedbugs causes some additional effort into eradicating *all* bedbugs, I certainly wouldn't be opposed.

The thought of being bitten is gross enough, but knowing that you can bring these bugs home and have to end up spending months and thousands of dollars to get rid of them is off-putting, and dampens my enthusiasm for travel.