Lice
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Lice
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Re: Lice
#2Can anyone explain why lice are not yet exterminated in first-world countries at least?
Re: Lice
#3Can anyone explain why lice are not yet exterminated in first-world countries at least?
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.
Re: Lice
#4Can anyone explain why lice are not yet exterminated in first-world countries at least?
You have to remember that lice outbreaks have nothing to do with hygiene or high standards of living per se. Merely close proximity of people.
Re: Lice
#5Can anyone explain why lice are not yet exterminated in first-world countries at least?
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.
Re: Lice
#6On the downside, extermination of such parasites which humans have hosted for generations, may have led to prevalence of allergies [1].
[1] https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16997-freedom-from-li...
Re: Lice
#7Earlier 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.
[deleted]
Re: Lice
#8Earlier 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.
It’s a common thing in German schools and kindergarten, we’ve been through that twice at least. I’d be surprised if that was different in Moldova, I’d rather expect that there was more stigma attached and less people talked about it or similar effects.
Re: Lice
#9This 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 never made a big deal about it or publicised it. It was accepted as one of the things everyone goes through once in a while. That said, there certainly is a light social stigma associated with having lice, and we too have experienced what the author went through while our parents tried to delouse us. I recall someone telling me that even the dangerous DDT was popular 3-4 decades back in my country for such purpose!
Re: Lice
#10Can anyone explain why lice are not yet exterminated in first-world countries at least?
Stigma. Misinformation. Disinformation. Classism. Etc.
It ends up being the poorest of the poor who keep alive vermin and other health issues. If they admit to having such issues, we punish them rather than help them resolve it.
Education is a known means to combat poverty, probably because it makes feasible to find what I think of as "middle class solutions" to myriad issues, including health and hygiene issues. Poor people often have a lack of knowledge and that lack of knowledge fosters problems and there are systemic barriers to educating them because we punish them rather than help them if they admit to having certain kinds of problems.
So they hide them and they don't get educated and so forth.
You sometimes see ugly jokes about "The third world country of America" because there are parts of the US where poverty is rampant, infrastructure is falling apart, etc. I imagine most first world countries have some areas of intractable poverty (though perhaps not all -- some stories suggest some countries are successfully resolving issues like homelessness).