Higher percentages in the U.S.

I was in touch with a tropical medicine PHD a couple of years ago who specialized in assassin bugs and chagas.

In S.E. Louisiana there was a significantly higher percentage rate of infectious assassins (Triatoma) than in Mexico and Central America.
This PHD traveled and did the testing.
This PHD figured that the reason the infection rates were higher south of the border was due to the types of homes poorer people lived in.
More cracks and crevices, some thatched roofs, windows with no screens, sometimes no glass, just a wood and string shutter.
The assassins can make a cozy home inside a human home with such conditions, proliferate, and drop down (they can fly) on sleeping humans for a meal.
The parasite (Trypanosoma cruzi) is transmitted through incidental fecal droppings from the assassin on the wound that was made.

Assassins are common enough in some rural and semi-rural areas in S.E Louisiana. Usually on a door, on the side of the house by a door, on steps leading to a door, on a window screen, on the rest of the sides of the house outside.
Probably would like to get a chance to get in.
I would bet that a percentage of deaths in S.E. Louisiana attributed to heart failure are a result of the ticker finally giving out due to chagas infection.
Microscopes are such mythical things in the offices of medical professionals and it is a certainty that 99.99999% are not remotely aware of the percentage of transmittable parasites in assassins in the state.
It is off the radar as of this date.

I corresponded with that PHD and read the published papers. Louisiana was a state of interest because of climate and other factors and was picked for testing of assassins. Tweet