Authored by Patricia Harte-Maxwell The history of vaccination and vaccine culture in the Global North has since the 18th century been predominantly concerned with the health and lives of children, such as this post from Medical News Today which recognizes myths fuelling anti-vaccination as referring only to children. However, children have always only made up…
Read MoreVaccine Collage
Below are accounts of vaccination from several authors. By Sarah Perkins Check crossed fingers hovering over search bar. Google local vaccines in your area. Kill time looking for time slots. Rinse. Repeat. You are too young for your community centre to care about your well-being. Look elsewhere. Check sweat-slick fingers on steering wheel out of…
Read MoreVaccination in Older Adults: Erasure, Barriers, and Hesitancy (Part Three)
By Patricia Harte-Maxwell The future may not be known, but current examples of vaccination securing life and opening doors exist. For example, vaccinations are recommended for travellers visiting countries where polio is endemic; some schools, like medical programs, and occupations require vaccinations to shadow or work in clinics and hospitals; and, related back to the…
Read MoreVaccination in Older Adults: Erasure, Barriers, and Hesitancy (Part Two)
By Patricia Harte-Maxwell Looking to the beginnings of variolation in England reveals that children were already regarded as the center of immunization – a product, I suggest, of smallpox – and that objection also already existed. Charles Maitland, in Mr Maitland’s Account of Inoculating the Small Pox from 1722, recounts variolation cases dealing mainly with…
Read More“Inoculation”
By Patricia Harte-Maxwell Lake Geneva, Wisconsin The 2021 U.S. National Snow Sculpting Championship, a 72-hour marathon of sawing, hacking, chipping, engraving, and, of course, shovelling, was held in early February in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin as part of a larger event called Winterfest. The competition drew 11 teams from around the country: 3 teams from Wisconsin…
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Shakespeare’s Jabber: Snapshot of a Filipino Nurse
The first public COVID-19 vaccination was an opportunity to snap a meaningful photograph to commemorate a historical moment that could influence vaccine skepticism. On December 8th, The New York Times published a picture of a man getting the second public vaccination worldwide whom they identified as William Shakespeare, 81, with a joke cribbed from Twitter; “if the first Briton to get the shot was Patient 1A, would Shakespeare be 2B or not 2B?”
Read MoreYou Are Experiencing Migraines in the Online World of COVID-19
The alarm goes off and you turn over. Before you are even fully awake you can feel it. The tell-tale tenderness of the eyes, the pressure in the left side of your head, the way the normally enjoyable radio station your alarm is set to suddenly sounds like nails on a chalkboard. You have woken…
Read MoreVaccine Skepticism and the Gender Binary
Kelly McGuire A National Geographic and Morning Consult poll released earlier this week filled many with consternation when it revealed that fully one quarter of respondents identifying as women indicated that they were unlikely to take a coronavirus vaccine when one came available.[i] This news shook the optimism of those triumphantly celebrating the Pfizer and…
Read More“The Truth of Artificial Immunity:”
A Personal Reflection on the Nature of Implants and the Body When I was very small, I was certain that the scar on my stomach was the bones of a little fish swallowed in the womb. In the bathtub, I would trace over the pale and ridged lines, link the signs of suture to a…
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Language is a Virus
“Language is a virus from outer space. The word has achieved a state of stable symbiosis with the host,” says William Burroughs. He proposes a theory of “the unrecognized virus” in his 1962 novel The Ticket That Exploded. He suggests, “A virus operates autonomously, without human intervention. It attaches itself to a host and feeds off of it, growing and spreading from host to host.”
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Vaxxers 