Mathilde Panot drew a few nervous glances from her fellow MPs as she stood in France’s National Assembly this week brandishing a glass vial. Inside, she declared, were some of the bedbugs that have “turned the lives of millions of our infested citizens into a nightmare”. France, she said, was sleep-deprived, in a state of paranoia, with people becoming socially isolated.

“A wave of panic has seized the country,” Panot said. “Bedbugs are proliferating in all public spaces: schools, hospitals, the workplace, retirement homes, prisons, trains and even cinemas”. It was time for the government to act: France needed a national disinfection service, effective and free for all. Never mind its creaking state and sky-high public spending.

The people of Paris and other French cities have indeed worked themselves into a frenzy in recent days over the bedbug plague. Horror stories — and gruesome pictures — have spread on social media faster than a mite can lay its eggs: the upholstery of a train seat crawling with bugs, the reddened, puffy skin of a bitten cinema goer.