Both articles cite or 'blame' climate change. And they may be right, in the sense that such 'infestations' are symptoms of natural climate change.
I read an article this morning (in
Spanish) about the bedbugs population in Spain, and their logic was "Bedbug reports are 70% up from last year, but they went down during lockdowns..... wink wink!!"
I get the sense that they may want to bring them back, and this is simply discouraging people from traveling and gathering.
Could this also be related to the effects of the Wave?
I'm not so sure, though I could be wrong, I did find these data from the US:
U.S. growth didn’t slowly fade away: It slipped, and slipped, and then fell off a cliff. The 2010s were already demographically stagnant; every year from 2011 to 2017, the U.S. grew by only 2 million people. In 2020, the U.S. grew by just 1.1 million. Last year, we added only 393,000 people.
However, I may be wrong, but I don't think people have lost interest in sex, or sexual gratification, at least not yet, what I have noticed is that people seem to have lost the creative connection with whatever allows a couple to start a family, but appetite for sex remains pretty high, it's just being consumed online and by themselves, connected to screens instead of a real person, and now with AI, soon there won't even be a real person on the screen.
But, as I type this, perhaps that's the shape it takes, people will go through the present debauchery but eventually will yearn for a real connection, deeper than the superficial one that the computer offers and that may change the paradigm of sex, although I think this switch requires conscious effort, I don't think it would simply happen to someone who isn't looking for it.
It is an interesting topic to discuss, I suppose if it takes off, it could be its own thread.