Bed Bugs & The Olympics

[Mark Pickering]

Heard a scary stat on the radio this morning about the spread of bed bugs in hotels throughout Sydney following the Olympics. They fear the same will happen in the UK too.

Anyone else heard this or know the exact stats?

I think it said 95% of all Sydney hotels had at least one infected room at the time of the Olympics and now 75% of all hotels in Australia have at least one infected room.

Apologies if these stats are little inaccurate, I'm recalling it from memory having heard it on the radio - either way the stats were scary (and are still making me itch thinking about them)
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[Naaby41]

That sounds scary:/
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[raaboo]

Put this in to context - did they tell you about the percentage that had bed bugs BEFORE the Olympics? Or how long it was after the Olympics that Bed Bugs were discovered?

Did they ask EVERY single hotel? Or did they just ask the bed-bug exterminators?

Statistics are about as reliable as a chocolate fireguard! They can be massively manipulated to make anything seem better or worse, take for example a recent radio advert that stated the company dealt with 'thousands of claims a year' with 'a 97% satisfaction rating amongst our clients' and then they reveal it is based on a survey of less than 300 people - these 300 people could be any selection specified by the company (i.e. only customers who wrote to say thank you, or only customers who had a successful claim), or if not, it could be that the statistics are uneven as more happy responses were returned, unhappy people may not have returned the survey etc, and even if everything was fair, it would still only represent a third of their customer base at best...


My point is that if you see statistics, take them with a pinch of salt - everything is made to sound better or worst for dramatic effect - what sounds worse - 1in 5 children cannot ready by the age of 5, 20% of children cannot read at the age of 5, 4 in 5 children can read by the age of 5, or the classic framing of 1 in 5 five-year-olds is illiterate! When you actually dig deeper you find that this is based on some survey that only went out to a small portion of the nation!

Beware the statistics!
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[Naaby41]

[CarlM]

Bed bugs are spreading rapidly across the USA, as well. We never had a problem up until a few years ago.

It has gotten so bad here that I inspect all of the bedding before I settle into a room. If you stay in a room that has bed bugs, you will likely take them home with you.
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