Germs and the balance of the world

Mathieu Perreault
Press

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Why write this book now?

The pandemic has something to do with it. I have never heard so much about RNA, vaccines and viruses. The trigger was an interview I gave to a journalist, who asked me, “What are the damn viruses for?” I thought to myself, ‘This is crazy, it’s both interesting and disturbing. This is the logical continuation of the popularization chronicles that I am making, an attempt at reconciliation with microbes. I have a doctorate in biology from the University of Quebec in Rimouski, I taught there for eight years.

Do you miss teaching?

A lot at first, but now I say I do adult education. I give my lessons in performance halls with 1,800 seats. But I miss the long term bonds with the students. Adult education is being lonely in a crowd, people come and then disappear.

Where does your gift as a storyteller and popularizer come from?

I grew up in oral sex, my parents and grandparents told stories, the whole gang were illiterate. I grew up in the arts, in an agrarian society where my father grew peanuts and had cows. I spent my youth leading his cows to graze in the savannah. I was talking to the cows, I was trying to guess what they were thinking. I told them stories. Gilles Vigneault said to let the children be bored. It stimulates creativity. Even my passion for germs comes from my childhood. I caught polio when I was 6 and it left my leg paralyzed. We must remember that with anti-vaccine. My whole life has been traced by this bad leg… you try to value yourself differently. You don’t know how to play soccer, so you try to please girls differently. I worked very hard in school to beat my brothers differently. Humor is a way of diverting people’s attention away from what bothers you. There, I type herniated discs, my body is a little damaged.

You make the connection between emerging microbial diseases and climate change.

With environmental upheavals, there is an erosion of biodiversity and more exposure to emerging viruses. We have to re-examine our place in the biosphere, not just buy the masks.

Can we really tell the emerging countries in Asia and Africa, where diseases like COVID-19 and Ebola have recently appeared, not to encroach too much on nature, not to develop?

Here there is Lyme disease, it is linked to urban sprawl. It is true that SARS-CoV-2 [NDLR : le coronavirus responsable de la COVID-19] comes from China, but the solution should include everyone.

Some argue that to be interested in the protection of the environment, it is necessary to have the means, and therefore that a society which gets richer is a society which protects nature better.

I don’t know that theory. Of course, to think about nature, it takes the possibility of eating, drinking, taking care of yourself, and feeding your family. But there is a backlash to enrichment. We want unlimited growth with a land of limited resources. Each election, we talk about growth. In nature, there is nothing that grows infinitely. The blue whale is the largest of the seas, but its life is complicated, it eats all the time. When the trees reach 100 m in height, the problems begin: how to get the sap to the top?

You have also made a name for yourself with your comments on diversity in society, coexistence and racism. Is there anything to do with your interest in germs?

I think the common point is diversity, the search for balance. There are a lot of things that we did in a certain way, and there are movements that say “wow, wake up”. Microbes have been around for 3.5 billion years and we have been around for 60,000 years. For me, we cannot get up one day and say: “Here are our enemies, we are going to bring them into line. Everyone has the place they deserve in the biosphere.

On the COVID-19 vaccine, many say the West should not use a third dose when many poor countries lack it.

It is an ethical issue that deserves to be raised. It is a mistake not to vaccinate the countries of the South, because they have a large population which is young and constitutes a huge reservoir for mutations in the virus. There would be something very strategic in vaccinating the countries of the South before giving a third dose, but I don’t think we are going to do it. We do not talk enough about another dimension: the divide of antivax in rich countries is very visible in emerging countries and all these big demonstrations undermine confidence in vaccines in southern countries.