“These little insects are spreading despair in our country,” a French politician told Parliament earlier this month, urging the prime minister to act. In recent weeks, viral videos showing insects that look like bedbugs on the Paris metro and trains, and sightings of bedbugs in movie theaters and at the airport, have fueled fears of a widespread outbreak across the city. While bedbugs can carry a large number of pathogens, they don’t seem to transmit diseases to humans, though they do produce itchy welts. They find us by sensing the carbon dioxide in our breath and our body heat. He was talking about bedbugs.įor the blissfully unaware, bedbugs are small wingless insects that bite humans and feast on our blood, often at night. He wasn’t talking about the threat of climate change or some frightening new virus. On a brisk morning last month, the deputy mayor of Paris, Emmanuel Grégoire, stood in front of a French TV camera with a serious look on his face and said: “No one is safe.”
