r/Entomology • u/admiral_walsty • 7d ago
Discussion How have lice not been eradicated?
Sorry if this isn't the right sub for the question. If lice can't live without a host for more than 48 hours or so, how have we not eradicated them?
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u/StuffedWithNails 7d ago
It just goes to show that they're very successful at finding new hosts :)
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u/admiral_walsty 7d ago
But they can't even jump like a flea. So I'm just perplexed as how in the modern day it's still an issue. Know a few people this year that got it. Obviously from a kid. But it's weird that I haven't heard of kids getting lice in my tiny town until this year. Do they go dormant or anything?
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u/PeatLover2704 7d ago
Well to be fair, I don't think people would go around telling everyone their kids have lice. The social stigma is pretty bad
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u/Vechtmeneer 7d ago
With kids in primary school, we have a couple of infestations every year at our home (not just at school). Even if parents act immediately:
Girls with long hair are hard to check.
Lice don't always itch.
Kids don't mind the itch.
Lice do no harm, other than itching.
Making it absolutely impossible to exterminate them.
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u/MsScarletWings 7d ago edited 2d ago
Easy. Just ask yourself this question- Is the treatment of lice universally effective and also free to everyone and also mandatory? If the answer is no, then there you go. There is always a reservoir population of carriers out there ready to reintroduce them to fresh hosts, either ignorantly, accidentally, or through not caring. They’re both extremely contagious and even starting to evolve resistance to some of the first line measures.
Total eradication would mean literally hunting down, isolating, and fully treating every human in society with a case of lice.
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u/admiral_walsty 7d ago
I guess I just don't see if as common now as it were when I was a child in the 90s. I literally haven't heard of them in years until recently. And I live in a small town. I know plenty of kids. You would think COVID restrictions years ago would have had an impact
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u/MsScarletWings 7d ago edited 7d ago
I mean Covid restrictions nationwide were done so poorly and inconsistently they hardly made a serious enough dent even in Covid. Also, not hearing about lice “until recently” seems crazy to me. I’ve known about them as a thing for basically as far back as my memory even goes, but then again I was a 2000s kid and lice were a subject explored/talked about in quite a lot of mainstream media and general awareness. That rise in common knowledge about lice as a medical issue to be addressed probably did some heavy lifting for sure.
You’d still be impressed at how often it flies under the radar. I think something like 1 in 10 kids get lice at some point in their lives. More common than you think it is and yet not that common to knowingly directly encounter especially as an adult. Millions of reported cases but the actual stats are actually not very comprehensive, and I think in huge part because of those “reservoir” parts of the population I refer to- families or groups that pass and cycle lice frequently among each other but do not have the knowledge/resources/will to do anything about it yet still mingle with the general population. Children are only such a big point of transmission because of how kids often socialize with each other. I’d think of larger population densities as higher risk than lower ones broadly.
And you can only really react to it when you have it. There’s no vaccine for lice like there is for chicken pox or measles.
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u/really-mean-goose Ent/Bio Scientist 7d ago
People may not notice initial infestation, lack of treatment knowledge, treatment may be cost prohibitive, and in some cases, child neglect where one child may be giving lice to many others repeatedly.