A Russian disinformation campaign partly fueled an October public frenzy about bed bugs in France, said a French minister on Friday.
Knewz.com has learned that the autumn panic was triggered mainly by anecdotal stories and viral posts on social media that eventually trickled into the mainstream media, particularly via talk shows.
Paris dealt with panic about bed bugs in the autumn. By: MEGA
The anxiety was also heightened by public concerns that the government would be unable to get the problem – which did not exist – under control before the 2024 Paris Olympics. Like most cities, Paris has bed bugs, but there was not a massive invasion of the bugs like people came to believe.
On Friday, French European affairs minister Jean-Noel Barrot told French broadcaster TFI that he believed a Russian disinformation campaign fueled the hysteria.
“The bed bug polemic was in a very large part amplified by accounts linked to the Kremlin, and they even created a false link between the arrival of Ukrainian refugees and the spread of bedbugs,” he said, according to Reuters.
Barrot did not claim that Russia manufactured the event but rather may have taken advantage of an opportunistic moment to create chaos in France.
Paris residents were concerned the bed bugs would affect the Olympics. By: Paris 2024 Olympics
He added that Russian cyberattacks on France have increased since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, especially as Paris tries to organize a unified European front in support of Ukraine.
French authorities also said Russia was behind the amplification of graffiti that depicted the yellow Star of David that cropped up in the city on October 31 in the early days of the war in Gaza, according to Reuters.
French politicians also helped fuel the concerns, particularly Mathilde Panot, who brought a vial she said contained a bed bug to critique the government’s apparent lack of action.
During the panic, extermination companies said calls for pest control were up 65%, even if some places were not actually infested. Additionally, sniffer dogs taken aboard public transportation did not find anything out of the ordinary.
A French minister believes the bed bug panic was fueled by Russia. By: MEGA
While the bed bug panic in France was likely overblown, the nuisance pests are indeed becoming more common.
The main reason is that pest control businesses killed the insects with DDT in the past, but that chemical was found to be unhealthy to humans. Bed bugs have since developed a resistance to milder poisons.
French politicians did not help ease public concerns about a bed bug infestation. By: MEGA
Bed bugs feed on blood during the night and typically hide in mattresses. Humans are their primary food source, and their bite is usually very itchy, often making it impossible to sleep on the infected bed.
Infestations can get out of control because a single female bed bug can lay between 200 and 500 eggs in its lifetime and can survive for months without food.
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