I had to live through a bedbug infestation about five years ago; the neighbours had a "sweep up and don't tell the management" approach, which I did not adopt.
After two rounds of standard chemical treatments, my apartment was empty of them -- it can be quite effective.
Despite that, I still constantly found reasons to believe that it might not yet be resolved, and lived a horrible shell of a normal life for months until I had served out my lease and (still amazingly bug free), could move. Even months after moving, I feared having somehow brought them along.
In retrospect, it's hard to believe: but they were gone after those two treatments. The greatest toll was the mental toll and the uncertainty of whether it could ever even be resolved. If anyone reading is going through it, just follow the instructions of a professional, and know that one day, you _will_ be past it.
There’s very different bedbug populations in different areas with wildly different levels of resistance to these chemicals. NYC and a few other major metropolitan areas have in practice spent decades maximizing how resistant these bugs are.
It might sound preposterous but even within NYC there’s very different lineages where wealthy areas tend to be much harder to deal with because people don’t want the stigma and so don’t tell anyone when they fumigate and they also travel more which means constantly risking exposure in hotels etc.
I guess chemical treatment or the suggested "heat to 60 degrees celsius" might work. But the f*** are pretty mobile and escape or call security / police.
After two rounds of standard chemical treatments, my apartment was empty of them -- it can be quite effective.
Despite that, I still constantly found reasons to believe that it might not yet be resolved, and lived a horrible shell of a normal life for months until I had served out my lease and (still amazingly bug free), could move. Even months after moving, I feared having somehow brought them along.
In retrospect, it's hard to believe: but they were gone after those two treatments. The greatest toll was the mental toll and the uncertainty of whether it could ever even be resolved. If anyone reading is going through it, just follow the instructions of a professional, and know that one day, you _will_ be past it.