Just a Mild Illness

"Humans like stories. We like words that can help us create pictures in our minds of how the world is or should be. We distrust numbers and cold, hard scientific data." Inspired by a line from "Your Baby's Best Shot" by Stacy Herlihy and E. Allison Hagood, "Just a Mild Illness" is a novelette designed to enlighten readers about the dangers of the anti-vaccine movement. The story, fictional but scientifically accurate, follows a pair of brothers, one healthy and the other with a primary immune disorder, and their classmate, a girl from an anti-vaxer family who throws their entire world into disarray. The story places particular emphasis on the dangerous complications of certain vaccine preventable diseases and the concept of herd immunity.