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A review by drwozniak
The Viral Underclass by Steven W. Thrasher
challenging
dark
informative
medium-paced
5.0
Read this immediately. If it’s the only book you read this year, if it’s the only book you ever read again, just make sure you read it.
The most transformative section for me was when the author discussed the criminalization of disease and viral transmission (usually through HIV). I have been guilty in the past (and present) of holding immense anger towards people who seem to have zero regard for spreading preventable illnesses (COVID, RSV, cold, Rinovirus) and this section really helped me work through that. I will still struggle with my anger at individuals but it helped a lot to reframe.
Overall, this did a great job at showing me how to look at how poisonous individualism can be and how even the “my body my choice” narrative feeds into that belief system. A belief system that does nothing to protect people and continues to shift responsibility away from society as a whole. If we are to move forward as a species, we need to look at how we treat illness as a community issue and not an individual problem.
The most transformative section for me was when the author discussed the criminalization of disease and viral transmission (usually through HIV). I have been guilty in the past (and present) of holding immense anger towards people who seem to have zero regard for spreading preventable illnesses (COVID, RSV, cold, Rinovirus) and this section really helped me work through that. I will still struggle with my anger at individuals but it helped a lot to reframe.
Overall, this did a great job at showing me how to look at how poisonous individualism can be and how even the “my body my choice” narrative feeds into that belief system. A belief system that does nothing to protect people and continues to shift responsibility away from society as a whole. If we are to move forward as a species, we need to look at how we treat illness as a community issue and not an individual problem.