by Me­chas and Roberto — When it comes to mi­crobes, the pub­lic still per­ceives them largely as the cause of in­fec­tions. This world­view goes back to the lat­ter half of the nine­teenth cen­tury with the sem­i­nal find­ings of Pas­teur and Koch. Dur­ing the past few decades this pre­dom­i­nant view changed to­wards a recog­ni­tion of mi­crobes' largely ben­e­fi­cial roles, but the pan­demic ap­pears to have slowed down this learn­ing process.