Virology
Joseph Osmundson
W.W. Norton & Co., $16.95
As a journalist protecting COVID-19, I’ve had a front-row seat to the pandemic. I’ve been overwhelmed with despair over the demise and struggling. I’ve been numb, making an attempt to maintain up with the deluge of COVID-19 research. One balm has been the understanding of colleagues who additionally report on COVID-19.
I discovered solace too in Virology, microbiologist Joseph Osmundson’s e-book of 11 wide-ranging essays, by which he writes of the pandemic and requires “a new rhetoric of care.” Osmundson consists of journal entries from the pandemic, and a few of his experiences are just like mine. He goals he’s at a gathering the place nobody is masked. He too felt the “density” of the pandemic: “Emotionally dense, with loss and struggle and even sometimes joy,” he writes. “Scientifically dense, with papers and pre-prints out every day that need reading and some analysis.”
Osmundson doesn’t simply deal with the COVID-19 coronavirus. He jumps from different viruses and the immune system to sickness and metaphors for sickness, to intercourse and HIV, to archiving historical past and whose tales get instructed. Parts of the e-book really feel like an anthology, with quotes from many writers who’ve weighed in on these subjects. Parts are a name to care for everybody, no matter race, ethnicity, wealth or who one loves.
Sign Up For the Latest from Science News
Headlines and summaries of the newest Science News articles, delivered to your inbox
Thank you for signing up!
There was an issue signing you up.
Overall, Osmundson questions how society thinks about viruses. “Viruses … are not evil, they don’t invade. They just are,” he writes. “The meaning we give a virus affects how we live with it.” When we describe viruses as enemies and sickness as a warfare, it “assumes the necessity of casualties.” He argues as a substitute to focus assets on caring for each other.
Born within the early Eighties, Osmundson, a homosexual man, is conscious about the messages that include viruses. “Our generation of gay men came after the plague,” he writes. “HIV didn’t just kill bodies. It killed a type of sex as well, a type of pleasure.” But new therapies have saved lives and altered perceptions. Pre-exposure prophylaxis can forestall an infection, whereas remedy can render HIV untransmissible (SN: 11/15/19). These advances modified our relationship with the virus, Osmundson writes. “I used to think that HIV would make it harder to find love and sex. Now we know that HIV-positive and undetectable is safe. It’s sexy.”
But the biomedicine that may change our relationship with viruses has not been wielded equitably, Osmundson observes. He returns all through the e-book to our frequent humanity. “That fact of all our bodies, vulnerable together, necessitates mutual care.”
Buy Virology from Bookshop.org. Science News is a Bookshop.org affiliate and can earn a fee on purchases produced from hyperlinks on this article.