On a recent Wednesday morning I made my way across Manhattan to New York Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center for one of a series of vaccinations I’ve been receiving in advance of my move to South Africa.
I enjoy visiting the medical center, which awakens my inner science journalist. The trip entails its own routine: take the No. 6 train to Hunter College, stop for coffee at the Starbucks at 66th Street and Third Avenue, then head east to York. Turn north at The Rockefeller University, which, with its London plane trees, may be among the city’s loveliest places.
The day after my visit to the neighborhood, Jessica Ho, a graduate fellow at the university, was slated to present her thesis, “Chormatin control of the antivrial response to influenza.” Chromatin, I learned, is the mix of DNA and proteins that forms the nucleus of cells.
For my part, thanks to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which publishes clear guidance for travelers, and my physician — whom I’ll refer to as Dr. H. — I’ve been vaccinated (or soon will be) for the following:
- Hepatits A
- Hepatitis B
- Typhoid
- Rabies
- Tetanus, diptheria and pertussis
- Mumps, measles and rubella
- Meningitis
- Yellow Fever (scheduled)
“Yellow Fever is a political vaccine,” Dr. H. told me. That’s because the South African government requires visitors from certain countries, including many in Africa that I hope to visit, to present proof of vaccination. To be sure, yellow fever also happens to be a virus that can be fatal in people who develop a severe form of the disease, according to the CDC.
Spending time in vaccine land offers more than sore deltoids. For example, I’ve learned about human rabies, which is rare in the U.S. but much more common in other parts of the world, where fewer people vaccinate their dogs. In “Rabid: A Cultural History of the World’s Most Diabolical Virus,” veterinarian Monica Murphy and journalist Bill Wasik describe rabies as follows:
“It is the most fatal virus in the world, a pathogen that kills nearly 100 percent of its hosts in most species, including humans. Fittingly, the rabies virus is shaped like a bullet: a cylindrical shell of glycoproteins and lipids that carries, in its rounded tip, a malevolent payload of helical RNA.
“We can go to a bat cave together now,” my girlfriend, who lives in South Africa and who’s also been vaccinated for rabies, wrote to me.
The latest round of vaccines sent me into my past. According to records my mother gave me a few years ago, I was vaccinated as an infant against polio and smallpox.
Smallpox was wiped out about 33 years ago but remains a bioterrorism concern. The U.S. halted routine vaccination in 1972 and no one knows whether vaccines received before then still confer immunity. What experts do know is that the intentional release of smallpox in a global city such as London could have worldwide effects, according to a paper by researchers at Harvard University, Northeastern University, Aix-Marseille Université in France and the Computational Epidemiology Laboratory in Torino, Italy published July 17 in the journal Scientific Reports. According to the authors:
We show through large-scale individual-based simulations that biological targeted attacks on a single city can result in the presence of exposed individuals in several countries before the health system is aware of the release and the ensuing outbreak.
Not good.
My mother also gave me a copy of a feeding guide the pediatrician gave her when I was nine months old and weighed 23 pounds. Here are the desserts the guide recommended:
- Soft custard
- Rennet — made with tablet
- Fruit whip
- Lemon or orange gelatin
- Cornstarch pudding
- Jello
No wonder I weighed 23 pounds.
Hang around the medical center enough and you learn all sorts of things. I picked up the following intel from two Jamaican women whose badges identified them as administrators. “When they have an employee appreciation event at Sloan-Kettering, the food is da best,” one woman said to her colleague. “Over here they serve things with bacon. How do you serve bacon? Not everybody eats pork.”