There was the British variant, the South African, then the Brazilian, and now the Californian.
“We are dealing with an evil virus and a lot smarter than you think.
"On the set of BFMTV, Professor Jean-François Delfraissy attributed Sunday evening to SARS-CoV-2 unsuspected qualities.
Those of a virus as nasty as it is clever, having found, less than a year after its appearance, the keys to open the locks that are opposed to it.
A sentence, pronounced by the media president of the Scientific Council, which was enough to set social networks ablaze and arouse a stir among scientists.
Among the ears which buzzed, those of the doctor in biology, Tania Louis, who signed "the Folle Histoire des viruses" at HumenSciences.
“The image is practical, but it is neither fair nor relevant.
If we push this reasoning, we can imagine everything, including that he starts jumping on us or resisting barrier gestures.
However, viruses are not conscious entities, their evolutionary phenomenon is not deliberately directed, contrary to what is suggested here.
"
The fault of chance
Difficult to imagine, for us humans who hate emptiness and the absence of explanations, but the mutations are not the result of a strategy put in place by the coronavirus to ensure its survival, but of… chance.
"Tell yourself that its genome is a succession of letters which reproduce again and again, simplifies Tania Louis.
Sometimes the enzyme - like a copyist monk - gets it wrong, and shells appear.
It's random, nothing to do with intelligence.
"
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"Random", the formula is familiar to us.
Two weeks ago, the virologist Bruno Lina, colleague of Jean-François Delfraissy at the Scientific Council, received us in his office in Lyon (Rhône) to explain to us how his laboratory, a reference in the matter, tracks down variants and the mechanism of appearance of the latter: "By replicating itself, the virus makes random errors," he said.
While we insisted: "Are these really mistakes, is it not rather for the virus an ultimate way to save its skin?"
", The scientist retorted, cash:" Viruses surprise us, but if there is one thing of which I am sure, it is that they do not have a neuron!
"
Adaptability
Astrid Vabret is obviously not saying the opposite.
But for the head of virology at the University Hospital of Caen (Calvados), the debate deserves to be raised, if only from an anthropomorphic point of view, this tendency to attribute to things human reactions.
“Delfraissy does nothing other than identify them to help us understand them.
They don't have intelligence in the strict sense, but a form of intelligence that lies in their ability to adapt, ”she sums up.
A faculty in which the professor would have liked us to be much more interested, to avoid disappointments.
“Initially, it was the opposite, we heard that SARS-CoV-2 was nice, almost naughty, because unlike the flu or HIV, it varied little or without consequence, launches the researcher.
It annoyed me, because it is not knowing the other coronaviruses!
Some have been in circulation among the population for centuries.
They resist, do rather well despite the immunity that we develop to deal with it.
"
The Manaus case
Immunity, a troubling point raised Sunday evening by Jean-François Delfraissy and who questions the long-term effectiveness of vaccines.
“Manaus in Brazil and Cape Town in South Africa were considered to have achieved a level of collective immunity of 70% and 45% respectively.
However, mutants occur in these two cities!
As if there was a sort of escape from a selection pressure, ”launched the immunologist,“ struck ”by this coincidence that he refuses to attribute to mere chance.
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“The mutation is random, but the more you allow a virus to circulate in the open air, the more it will statistically mutate.
This is normal, because it has less constraint, "raises Dr. Tania Louis, who sees a" favorable context "but still no mischief.
With her twenty-five years of virology on the clock, Astrid Vabret reminds her that viruses are not at their first attempt in debates of a philosophical nature!
One of them, revived in 2013 during the co-discovery by Didier Raoult and Jean-Michel Claverie of giant viruses containing thousands of genes, separates the scientific community into two almost equal groups: are they, yes or no living organisms?
For Vabret, from the moment they reproduce, it is yes!
Others point out that it is unable to multiply without a cell to host it.
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Anyway, the researcher is sure: this coronavirus must question us again, shake up our certainties "including on the modes of transmission of respiratory infections.
The mistake would be not to learn a lesson, to have a short memory.
“In the absence of that of the virus, mobilize human intelligence.
