Lost Immunity by Daniel Kalla (free reads TXT) 📕

points her finger at her. “But what happens when a baby comes down with this meningitis? Are you going to expect us to vaccinate infants, too?”

Lisa turns her head and gazes out the window. “I hope we don’t ever have to find out.”

CHAPTER 28

Darius Washington had assumed he was just getting a cold. The pain from the open sores inside his mouth woke him a few times through the night. He thought about getting up to swallow a couple of ibuprofen tablets but didn’t want to disturb his roommate, Jayden, a notoriously light sleeper. They’re both in the summer engineering co-op program and have to sit the same term-ending physics exam this afternoon.

Shit! I don’t have time for this today, he thinks in the morning, regretting ever going to the vaccination clinic. Always happens. Just like with the flu shot. You get a vaccine, and a couple days later you get sick.

As he struggles to even sit up, Darius realizes he’s not going to be writing any exam. His mouth feels as raw as if it had been scalded by boiling soup. And his throat stings like there are razor blades wedged inside. But his lips bother him most of all. They feel like two sausages stuck on his face, worse than any dental freezing. And he can’t control the drool that streams down onto his neck and chest.

Darius instinctively reaches up to touch his face. His fingers meet the taut, tender blisters that run all the way along his swollen lips. Fear grips him as he realizes the fluid pouring down his chin isn’t saliva but liquid leaking from those blisters.

He opens his mouth to call for help, but all that emerges is one long, barely audible croak.

CHAPTER 29

It’s a factory. Even though the gymnasium is clean, and the process runs in an orderly manner, the whole setup still reminds Max of some kind of sweatshop. Probably because he finds it all so toxic.

Max didn’t plan to stay as long as he has at this vaccination clinic. It looks no different than the other two he already visited. And they all function just as Yolanda described.

I’ve got to be careful with her, he reminds himself. Despite her gullibility and eagerness to please, even Yolanda is beginning to tire of his constant questions and requests. She doesn’t understand why he cares so much. She couldn’t, though, could she?

Max is discouraged to see the line for today’s clinic is even longer than the previous ones. But it only hardens his resolve. On the pretense of searching for someone, he moves forward relatively unnoticed until he’s standing beside a family at the front of the line. He watches intently as the nurse at the nearest desk raises a yellow-topped vial in her hand. She pops off the cap, flips it upside down, and pokes the syringe’s needle in it, withdrawing the clear liquid.

He is so focused on the procedure that he doesn’t even notice the woman beside him until she says, “Hello.”

He looks over to see Seattle’s chief public-health officer at his side. “Oh, hi.”

“You’re a naturopath, right?” she says. “You questioned me at the public-health forum. I’m sorry, I can’t recall your name.”

“Max Balfour.”

“Lisa Dyer,” she says. “Based on our last conversation, Dr. Balfour, I wouldn’t have expected to see you at one of these clinics.”

“I have a teenage son.” He shrugs. “I’m worried about this meningitis, just like any other parent.”

Her expression is skeptical. “And you’re planning to get him vaccinated?”

“I’m considering it. I wanted to understand the process for myself. To wrap my head around it.”

“Would be a big step for you and your son, wouldn’t it?”

“It would.”

“So you’re not opposed to all vaccines?”

“Not all. Vaccines have their place. Smallpox was a good example. Although the disease was naturally waning anyway.”

“It only waned because of the vaccine.” She frowns. “Smallpox used to kill one out of every seven children in the world. When we developed enough herd immunity through global immunization, the virus died out. That’s how vaccines work.”

“That’s how they’re supposed to work,” Max counters. “But they don’t always, do they? Take the tuberculin vaccine. It was meant to cure tuberculosis. But it only ended up killing more people than it helped.”

“That was a hundred years ago.”

“There are more recent examples.” He speaks louder, aware that the people nearest them have begun to listen in. “Like the Cutter incident in the 1960s, when forty thousand people were infected with polio through the vaccine that was meant to protect them from the same virus. Or the swine flu vaccine in the late seventies that caused hundreds of people to be incapacitated by that neurologic disease, Guillain-Barré syndrome, after being vaccinated against a nonexistent threat. It led to the biggest class-action lawsuit settlement in the history of medicine.”

“You can’t compare historical incidents to today’s standards. Quality control is far more rigorous now. By law, every single batch of vaccine is individually tested for purity and compliance.”

Max motions to the chair where a young girl is being jabbed in the shoulder. “So tell me. What’s your standard for this vaccine?”

“To begin with, it has already undergone vigorous phase-three clinical trials involving well over a thousand recipients without any concerning outcomes.”

“Phase-three trials don’t always replicate results in the real world, do they? That’s why there’s a phase four. Postmarketing surveillance. To study the real-world clinical outcomes.”

“I understand how trials work, Dr. Balfour.”

“Then you must remember the first rotavirus vaccine that came out not twenty years ago?”

She sighs heavily. “Yes.”

“It sailed through phase-three trials, didn’t it, Dr. Dyer? It was only after they started to broadly distribute it that they discovered that it caused kids’ intestines to twist until the blood supply was cut off.”

“It’s called ‘intussusception.’ And that’s an exaggeration. It was only slightly more common among the vaccinated kids but still rare.”

You people! Max struggles to hide his disgust. “I’m guessing you would view it differently if it had happened to your child?”

“And