People were asking, “Can you see bed bugs?”

They were actually sat in the A Delta flight at Chicago Midway Airport.

It was the end of April 2012 with the plane was on its way to Chicago when the flight was put under quarantine and no-one was allowed to get off.

Police surrounded the plane – still on the runway – while paramedics waited nearby.

The trouble began when fifty year old Lise Sievers told her mother that she had some tiny, itchy red dots on her body, and that they were spreading.

Lise was coming back home from Uganda but things started to go wrong after her mother notified health officials and reported that Lise had an unidentified rash….. even though Lise had thought that she had only been affected by a bad case of bed bugs.

The airport’s officials feared that the problem was actually Monkeypox virus.

You Cannot Get Off The Plane – Is It Bed Bugs?

After some delay, the pilot announced that no-one was to be allowed off the plane because there was a possibility of a contagion on board.

Things had to be  checked out.

Officers entered the plane with protective clothing, gloves and face-masks so they could examine Lise, take photographs of the sores  and send them off to  the headquarters of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

They Thought The Worst

Understandably, the other passengers feared the worst whilst they were confined to the plane.

At that stage it was thought that Lise had a case of Monkeypox.

Monkeypox can be fatal. It is similar to smallpox and can be caught from contaminated bedding and clothes as well as from animals.

Is It Monkeypox Or Bed Bugs?

Symptoms of Monkeypox include having a rash of swollen bumps on the skin that fill with fluid.
Symptoms of Bed Bugs include swollen and red areas that are often itchy.

Bed bugs and Monkeypox can both be “caught” when laying on infected beds.


Side Note – It can be surprising how easily bed bugs can be “picked up” if we just happen to be exposed to them. And the result? An infection that can be taken to our own home.  See the free home remedy for bed bugs bonus which can stop this happening.


As it turned out, it is thought that Lise was suffering from a case of scabies, which are very small eight-legged mites that burrow into the skin and lay eggs.

Lise and her fellow passengers were finally released after being held on the plane for over two hours.

Notice:- See the Three things you need to know before using a home remedy for bed bugs .

Apparently Lise and many of the plane’s passengers were soon asking themselves, “Can you see bed bugs” each time they caught sight of anything small and red.

And who could blame them?