>>212291835you get bed bugs afaik by transplanting a specimen or eggs from an already existing population.
these exist in cheap hotels or in antiquity stores. they also get carried in by animals.
my grandparents visit socialist sports clubs from the former warsaw pact in czechia and poland (my best guess), went to africa recently (by second best guess), host christian youth in their guest rooms from all over (my third guess).
so they're basically like a hotel without the hotel cleaning with the amount of people they see through and visit.
in their time bed bugs didn't exist because being an exterminator wasn't such a specialty thing, quite cheap and fast, and used pesticides so toxic that they'd kill pretty much everything