
Little Shot of Horrors
The poet and essayist Eula Biss first became interested in vaccination, the subject of her book On Immunity: An Inoculation, as a new mother taken aback by the anxieties her son’s birth provoked. When her son was born—in 2009, the same year that the H1N1 flu became pandemic—Biss “crossed over into a new realm in which I was no longer fearless.” She began worrying about lead paint on the walls and the hexavalent chromium in her water. She slept with a baby monitor beside her. As she puts it, “I wanted to hear him breathing. I understood that this was an absurd indulgence but it was one I could