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Press Center: The pandemic questions humans

The health crisis opens many debates. Your newspaper and the Mends-France area have asked experts to clarify the issues. Today, palontologist Michel Brunet.

Palontologist, discoverer of Touma, Michel Brunet, deserving professor of the University of Poitiers and College of France.

At a time when the consequences of the pandemic settle in our lives, what place do you give science?

In the cacophony of current information one often has the impression that the knowledgeable are the most numerous despite a usual conclusion summing up “it is a new virus, we do not know”. I would especially like to encourage more reserve and caution. With regard to the pandemic, all of our problems are primarily science. However, in science, our only certainty is our uncertainty. It is therefore more than urgent that everyone remains in their role and in the field of their knowledge. This would avoid the ambient confusion which generates more fear than appeasement. We have just taken a first step, the shortest. We are preparing a second phase and all, collectively and in solidarity, we must succeed if we want to avoid a health, human and economic disaster. This new phase will only end with the hoped-for discovery of a vaccine. One can imagine that during this long path already known therapies, or even others, will help to reduce the viral load and therefore some of the most deleterious effects of Covid-19. To get there we have only one choice, to cooperate, that is to say, to behave as a human.

The pangolin arrived in the media space at the point of departure of the pandemic in China. Whose developer is it?

The pangolin brings us back to the beginning of our evolutionary history. We were first nomadic gatherers, then nomadic gatherers and hunters for most of this history. We only became sedentary farmer farmers less than 10,000 years ago. at that time the world population could be estimated around 5,000,000 against more than 7 billion today … Our history shows that, very early, we added meat to our menu. This has been preserved in our habits, as inscribed in our genetic heritage. Whether in Africa or Asia, so-called bushmeat is almost always present for a festive meal. This is the case with the pangolin. It will be very difficult to change these cultural traditions. In addition the pangolin sees its quails used in the Chinese pharmacope, very large scale … We are there very precisely in the presence of the dual nature and culture too often forgotten. Only education will allow a favorable outcome.

education that you have been defending for a very long time through your activities with young audiences …

It is certainly no coincidence that we humans are educated all our lives, unlike our genetically close cousins, the chimpanzees. This pandemic reminds us that the education of young people is the result of a close link between the family and the school: this is what happened during confinement. But the progression of knowledge is so rapid that education must continue for life. The world of tomorrow is probably unpredictable. To face it we must all remain united, and … optimistic!

> Tomorrow: runways.

express question

During confinement, what do you read?
The rudimentary and deep work of Franois-Xavier Fauvelle from the Collge de France Le Rhinocros d’or published in 2013 … and Soundjata, or the Mandingo pope by Djibril Tamsir Niane who listened to the Traditional Africa, a book published in 1960.
What are you listening to?
The timeless jazz of Sydney Bechet … Little flower …

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