Everything is Tuberculosis |
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27 February 2026 - Erlenbach
I read this book to understand my kids better. Alora and Brittan loved the Vlog Brothers (John Green and his brother Hank) and tried to emulate them on YouTube with WogsVlogs. Also I twice looked at it Orell Füssli in the Hauptbahnhof and kept thinking about it afterwards. 37 francs is a lot to pay for such a tiny book after all.
Reading about a disease we haven't licked yet is interesting and irritating. I don't understand why we took out smallpox and keep fighting malaria but not this. Maybe good to keep something terrible in the hopper to keep our immune systems from getting too weak? Or because of the association with the less desirable parts of society?
But I was genuinely surprised when Green started whining about his own imagined problems in the midst of talking about real people actually dying from tuberculosis. But I have millennial kids. Perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised. I have to sit down and admit that I just don't understand that everyone under 40 claims to have a mental illness. Is victim status so valuable? I bought a book about tuberculosis. That the author sometimes feels anxious seems irrelevant. But for millenials does that make him more relateable and therefore more credible?
Unfortunately it gets worse. Green turns the story of searching for a cure to lauding transgender surgery. If this is the voice Alora heard, then I think I hate John Green. Maybe he is just a product of the age, but his words are cancer.
