In January, the immunologist Ugur Sahin, 54 years old, came across an article published in The Lancet, the prestigious scientific journal british medical : a new virus appeared in Wuhan, in the Hubei province, China. The article tells that the virus has spread like wildfire within a family of six people. Even if, at any time, The Lancet does not evoke the risk of a pandemic, the drama that is playing out so far from his laboratory in Mainz, the capital of the verdant Land of Rhineland-Palatinate, immediately puts the chip in the ear of Sahin.

The virus plot, this professor of...

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Stefan Albrecht/SP – dpa Picture-Alliance, via AFP – Raphael Lafargue-pool/SIPA

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