Skip to content

On Immunity, Inoculation, and Individuals

2020-11-10 · letter vlog · John · 4:00 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Health (also: Books & writing) · mode: Personal essay · tags: self promotion, timely hook

Inspired by Eula Biss's On Immunity, read by Life's Library, John retells the usual story of Edward Jenner and the smallpox vaccine and corrects it: milkmaids, China, African communities and Onesimus knew inoculation first, and the vaccine did not end smallpox; innovation is species-wide collaboration, so a new vaccine deserves monuments to cooperation, not statues.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Life's Library enrollment opens Friday; the book club has been reading On Immunity

  • ★★ John says Life's Library's annual membership enrollment begins this Friday (13 November 2020) and asks viewers to become members or gift a subscription to a friend, links in the description. — 00:00:00
  • ★★★ John calls Eula Biss's On Immunity, chosen for Life's Library by guest curator Celeste Ng, brilliant; it really deepened his understanding of immunity and inoculation. — 00:00:00

00:00:29 — On Immunity is not centered on individuals, unlike most books John reads

  • ★★ John says the book achieves something remarkable: a page-turny history of vaccines, disease and our fears about them that is not centered on individuals. — 00:00:29 · vaccine
  • ★★ Most books John reads center individuals bending the arc of a larger story; he is not opposed to them, has written some, and does think individual choices bend the arc of the human story. — 00:00:29

00:00:58 — The Jenner story of the smallpox vaccine and what it leaves out: milkmaids, China, Onesimus, other vaccinators, 300 million deaths

  • ★★★ John says that when we think of human history primarily as the exploits of powerful, lauded or brilliant individuals, we miss so much. — 00:00:58
  • ★★ In the story as John always heard it, Edward Jenner noticed in the late 18th century that milkmaids with cowpox seemed immune to smallpox, then inoculated his gardener's eight-year-old son with cowpox. — 00:00:58
  • ★★ John says that, like a lot of great stories, the Jenner story isn't exactly untrue; it just isn't the whole truth. — 00:01:27
  • ★★ John says Jenner did not discover that milkmaids were immune to smallpox: lots of people knew it, including the milkmaids themselves. — 00:01:27
  • ★★ John says many smallpox inoculation strategies already existed: in China, for centuries, people inhaled dried smallpox scabs to induce a mild case and then immunity. — 00:01:56 · China
  • ★★★ John says African communities had effective inoculation strategies too: Cotton Mather, often credited in America with inventing smallpox inoculation, learned it from an enslaved African named Onesimus. — 00:01:56 · United States
  • ★★ John notes variolation differs importantly from true vaccination, but several people independent of Jenner were doing very similar smallpox vaccination work at the time. — 00:02:26 · vaccine
  • ★★★ John says true innovation is almost never a heroic individual succeeding by his own effort, and almost always a growing body of expertise and evidence making new breakthroughs possible. — 00:02:55
  • ★★★ John says Jenner's work did not end smallpox: by the end of the 19th century vaccination was safe and effective, yet in the 20th century smallpox killed over 300 million people, mostly in places impoverished by colonialism. — 00:02:55 · vaccine

00:03:24 — Jenner was part of a species-wide collaboration; monuments to cooperation for a new vaccine

  • ★★★ John says Jenner's work was extremely important and contributed to smallpox's eventual eradication, but he was participating in a massive, centuries-long, species-wide collaboration. — 00:03:24 · collective action
  • ★★★ John hopes a new vaccine is coming and says that, if it is, we should build not a statue of one person but monuments to the open cooperation of thousands that achieves shared immunity. — 00:03:24 · vaccine

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: collective action · cumulative culture · Edward Jenner · great man theory · On Immunity · smallpox · vaccine

Also: People: Ayn Rand · Cotton Mather · Onesimus

Projects: Life's Library

Terms: doobly-doo

Concepts: colonialism · cowpox · variolation

Places: Africa · China · United States

Events: Salem witch trials

Only in the description or credits: Celeste Ng · Eula Biss

Also centred on cumulative culture: I Gotta Go: Signing Off and Thinking about Inspiration · Redefining What it Means to Matter · 5 Songs You've Never Heard That You've Heard 1000 Times · Dear Young People, You Terrify Me · What a Concept!! · The Weirdest Post-Chemo Symptoms

Also centred on great man theory: I Gotta Go: Signing Off and Thinking about Inspiration · The Myth of Greatness · Redefining What it Means to Matter · Making the World's Largest Ball of Paint

Also centred on smallpox: Why the Deadliest Virus Was the Easiest to Kill

Later videos replying to this one

  • 2020-11-13 · How We Teach: Individualist Stories (Hank) — continues — “In your last video you were talking about how often stories of great accomplishment are told as stories of individual genius rather than, like, collective progress.” (00:00:00)