Lice • Hacker News Board

Re: Lice

#11

Post by watwut » Sat, Mar 27, 2021, 8:28 PM UTC

webmobdev wrote: post #9

This is culturally fascinating to me as schools in India do not consider a lice infestation in any student as a major hygiene issue and raise a hue and cry about it (like I presume some western schools do?). They treat it as a personal issue, something that is annoying. Some teacher may inform the parent if they suspect a student has lice, or even offer tips to the affected student on how to deal with it, but they ne…

The parents are informed if there are lice in school. So then you check your kids hair more often and by special shampoo for it. The information about lice is accompaigned by ask to do exactly that - check kids hair and if they are found work to get rid of it.

The result is that not everyone goes through live, only few unlucky kids do. Basically, it prevents spread. The lice themselves keep existing, cause spread is not zero.

Re: Lice

#12

Post by mrwh » Sat, Mar 27, 2021, 8:42 PM UTC

dmitriid wrote: post #5

riffraff wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You only need one person to reinfect everyone else, there is no immunity, and you can't reliably rid the whole population of lice. Even if you did, a single tourist could reintroduce it. But it certainly is not as big a problem as it once was, when I was a kid 30+ years ago you still got TV ads about anti-lice shampoo, as it was still a common enough problem. This is definitely not the case anymore.

> This is definitely not the case anymore. Except, surprisingly, Sweden where I live now. Lice outbreaks at schools are a very common thing. This surprised me, as this wasn't a thing even in my own ass-backwards country of Moldova.

I recall lice breakouts at my UK school. (Though now I have to remind myself that I'm galloping towards middle age and that was at least thirty years ago.)

Re: Lice

#13

Post by klondike_klive » Sat, Mar 27, 2021, 9:25 PM UTC

mrwh wrote: post #12

dmitriid wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is definitely not the case anymore. Except, surprisingly, Sweden where I live now. Lice outbreaks at schools are a very common thing. This surprised me, as this wasn't a thing even in my own ass-backwards country of Moldova.

I recall lice breakouts at my UK school. (Though now I have to remind myself that I'm galloping towards middle age and that was at least thirty years ago.)

The "nit nurse" coming to the school was a big deal. I only remember it happening once or twice (it was probably every year on some predetermined date) but each time a whispered thrill went through the whole school. It was like a celestial visitation.

Re: Lice

#14

Post by chris1993 » Sat, Mar 27, 2021, 11:01 PM UTC

maxk42 wrote: post #2

Can anyone explain why lice are not yet exterminated in first-world countries at least?

They’re pretty common in Australia and have evolved resistance to many chemical treatments, to the extent that the recommended treatment is combing with conditioner, but you only need one or two eggs to be missed to restart the cycle. Plus kids often don’t notice they have lice until they have a lot of lice, so the touching heads together which happens a lot with smaller kids spreads lice fast across a group. Basically they are really hard to completely eradicate.