This week, I had somewhere north of 2,000 words on the novel. The needle moves.
Last week, the World Health Organization (W.H.O) ended Covid-19 as a global health emergency. Coincidentally, I read Immune by Philipp Dettmer, which serves as a reminder that for three years the Covid emergency transformed many of us into quasi virologists — amateur biological sleuths and experts. “In a way this is the best and the worst time to write a book about the immune system,” Dettmer writes in a near-end chapter dedicated to Covid, “the best time because more people might be interested in understanding what the hell is going on inside their bodies and how the body handles diseases.” It’s the worst of times because we lack the science to explain Covid (book was published in 2021). Post-emergency declaration, we still don’t have all the science and explanation of Covid. Folks don’t even agree on where it started.
What we do have is our memories. I can’t measure this, but the last three years is probably a moment when more people at any given moment in history thought about the immune system. A moment when many of us spoke the language of virus protection, morbidity rates, infection rates, variants, vaccines, masks. When we thought about hospitals, essential workers (or if you worked in a hospital or deemed an essential worker — when media and public put your profession in the national discourse).
A time when some of us thought about the invisible and airborne spittle pregnant with bits of virus that hijack the air and look to be sucked into a pair of lungs. A time when “Fuckin Covid,” was uttered as the months wore on and clawed through planned weddings, concerts, travel, work, and visiting grandparents. It’s when a collective (or partial) gaze turned inwards, underneath our skin to our biological shields and barriers — the invisible world of our immune system — and the remarkable tiny bits of us that keeps us alive. Even Covid non-believers must have thought about the words “immune system” for at least a moment.
With Immune Philipp Dettmer, the creator of the educational Youtube channel and animation studio, Kurzgesagt (German for “in a nutshell"), looks to capture that fleeting interesting in the immune system.
The book is a “Magic School Bus'' like ride with Kurzgesagt’s illustrations showcasing their signature midnight purple background. We see all the players of our immune system, colorfully printed in the pages — such as the coral kush ball, dendritic cell; the submarine yellow, macrophage; the green interloper, parasitic worm. Immune creates an imaginative visualization set of diagrams that supplement Dettmer’s clear prose.
The only qualms are the occasional metaphor mishaps. Dettmer goes for the well-trodden war metaphor through many of his pages. Like when he compares a white blood cell Neutrophil to a “chimp on coke with a bad temper and a machine gun.” The visual is helpful — you know the Neutrophil means radical business when going after a pathogen — but it’s wobbly and cringy and as easy as it is ( I'm with Songtag on this one) our immune systems are not a war zone. They are closer to a national park, my metaphor of choice.
Or perhaps when Dettmer writes that we have 40 trillion cells in our body and we should imagine each of those cells as an individual person. “We need to stack them until trillions of people are standing on top of each other, holding hands and linking arms, forming living structures. A giant made out of flesh rises 60 miles into the sky reaching the edge of space.” My brain starts to grasp on a cell giant made of the bodies of people that is supposed to represent the cells in my own body. It get recursive and needs pause — not the clearest of metaphors.
These metaphor ruts though should not discourage anyone from picking up this book. Curiosity of our systems should always remain high. If I had a kid at home, or a teen, I’d plop this book right in my home, or at least watch one of Kurzgesagt’s videos.
An emergency might be over, but the immune system is still there, carrying its daily wonder.
On Monday, I’ll be launching a new newsletter in addition to this one. I’ll make an announcement on here with links, info, etc. Stay tuned.
ENDIT.
Interesting thoughts Tucker!