[HN Gopher] Lice
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Lice
Author : library
Score : 41 points
Date : 2021-03-26 22:11 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (granta.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (granta.com)
| mih wrote:
| On 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...
| maxk42 wrote:
| Can anyone explain why lice are not yet exterminated in first-
| world countries at least?
| chris1993 wrote:
| 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.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| 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).
| riffraff wrote:
| 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.
| dmitriid wrote:
| > 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]
| mrwh wrote:
| 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.)
| klondike_klive wrote:
| 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.
| Xylakant wrote:
| 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.
| kyberias wrote:
| 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.
| webmobdev wrote:
| 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 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!
| watwut wrote:
| 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.
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