On "On Immunity" by Eula Bliss *****

This work received rave reviews, so when I had the opportunity to pick up a copy for free in December, I did. Still, it wasn't one of those books that I was particularly anxious to read, and during an extended break from work, when normally I would have had time for more leisure reading, it still didn't make the cut. And so it has sat here on my shelf for nearly three months, until the spread of covid-19 placed me into social distance. Suddenly, the topic seemed more pertinent to my life, and I finally opted to read the book each night before bed.

Bliss is a poet. The book itself is broken into short essay-like chapters on topics related to vaccination. As such, it doesn't lend itself well to being summarized in a review like this. But each short section is fascinating. One learns not just about Bliss's own fears with regard to mothering and whether or not she should immunize her son but also about the reasons for those fears and the responsibility that motherhood brings with it. One also learns, of course, a bit about the history and science of vaccination.

Perhaps one of the most interesting things that Bliss notes is that it's safer to be a unvaccinated person among a largely vaccinated population than it is to be a vaccinated person in a largely unvaccinated population. In this sense, the vaccination of others ennables the lack of vaccination among the few who claim it to be dangerous or bad in some way. In other words, community matters. And that seems all the more poignant at this time when so many are being asked to stay home to help prevent the spread of a virus for which there is no vaccine. The more who remain home, the more we enable others to beat the virus.