I read somewhere (I think Bill Bryson's "At Home") that they were almost wiped out at one point in the 20th century, but have recently started making a comeback which seems to correlate with the rise of energy saving low temp wash cycles that aren't as effective at killing them.
Possible the higher instances are related to the fact that schools no longer do routine screening for lice. No more school nurse and no more chopsticks checks monthly means that they have a chance to spread amongst the kids before anyone notices.
There are sporadic outbreaks of head lice in my children’s preschool. It doesn’t seems to have change much since I was in that age myself soon fifty years ago.
I'm going to guess most people here had short hair while in elementary school...you're all so lucky!
I've always had clean thick long blonde hair, which happens to be lice's favourite hair type. Every time there was a lice outbreak in school, I got it. Its very much a thing in Canada still.
I grew up in a rural area in a second-world country, during the 90ies when the economy went from shitty to complete shit, and many people had to subsist on grazing, so to speak: I helped to plant (and then gather) potatoes, tomatoes and other vegetables in our backyard. But even then, lices were mostly something out of WW2-era stories, or something you'd get if you hanged out with local "wandering folk", I guess; I don't remember any lice cases in my school although we did have our hair checked in the elementary.
Then things generally improved and life is now much better; so what about the lices? According to the 2019 statistics, there were 200 cases of headlice per 100'000 children that year. Quite a number, but not a huge one, really.
So that's why I asked--if in a poor second-world country lices were almost a non-issue, then surely that means the rich first-world countries have managed to completely get rid off the lice, and much earlier, too? Right?
Indeed they are. We battled the lice on multiple occasions with our two girls (in Canada). Pre-COVID, there was nothing we wanted to see less than a letter from the daycare or school about a lice case in the room. Lice are a pain in the butt.
