The R@VN: A Requiem for Antivaxxers

Heather McSharry, PhD
Oct 14
7 min read

Summary

In this special Month of the Macabre episode, Infectious Dose steps into gothic territory with a haunting reimagining of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven—rewritten for the age of science denial.

The R@VN follows a man who built his fame on rejecting vaccines and mistrusting public health—until a disease he dismissed returns to claim him. As paralysis sets in, his smart-home AI, the Rational Autonomous Virtual Nexus (R@VN), becomes both witness and judge, speaking in clinical tones that sound increasingly like prophecy.

What begins as denial ends as digital haunting—a parable for the consequences of rejecting science.

It’s fiction… but the danger is real.

🪶 Listen for:– A modern retelling of The Raven with Poe’s original rhythm and rhyme– The intersection of technology, hubris, and health– How polio still haunts us—and why vaccine denial makes it rise again

💉 Related episode: A Plague Returned

Note: R@VN is a fictional artificial intelligence system created for storytelling purposes. Any resemblance to actual products, companies, or technologies is purely coincidental.

The R@VN is inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” (1845), now in the public domain.

Listen here or scroll down to read full episode.

Full Episode

Sometimes facts alone can’t pierce denial. So tonight, we’re exploring something different. A descent through verse and voltage—a dark reimagining of one of my favorite poems, Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven, that explores denial and consequence in a time of disinformation.

Our protagonist is no stranger to conviction—a man who once mocked vaccines and built his identity on distrust—finds himself paralyzed by one of the diseases he dismissed. As his smart-home AI—the Rational Autonomous Virtual Nexus— or R@VN, tracks his failing body, it begins to sound less like a machine and more like a ghost.

Poe’s original poem explored grief, obsession, and the descent into madness when faced with an inescapable truth. This adaptation does the same—but in our century’s language of algorithms, denial, and consequence.

It’s fiction. But the danger… is still very real.

Before we begin, I want to tell you why I wrote this piece.

Every time I read comments online dismissing vaccines or mocking scientists, I think of how easily stories twist into weapons. The original Raven captured that spiral—how conviction can curdle into obsession, and how truth becomes unbearable once it’s too late.

I wanted to translate that into our modern language of data and denial—because the ghosts haunting us now don’t come from tombs, but from algorithms.

When I started imagining this story, I kept thinking about the children who once lay inside iron lungs—encased in metal cylinders that breathed for them when their own lungs could not. To see the world, they had to look into a mirror suspended above their faces. They watched life happen backward, reflected. Parents spoke to them through glass. Nurses brushed their hair, turned their pages, adjusted the mirrors so they could glimpse the world they’d lost the power to enter.

I kept wondering what it must have felt like—to be so young, to hear the mechanical hiss of the machine that kept you alive, and to realize that a simple shot could have prevented it all. That image stayed with me as I wrote: a child looking into a mirror, seeing the world upside-down, because trust was too fragile to protect them.

So this isn’t just a poem—it’s a mirror, held up to us...and a very real danger.

The R@VN by Heather McSharry

Once upon a Tuesday dreary, scrolling headlines weak and weary,

Over many a spiteful comment filled with fear and tainted lore—

While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,

As of something faintly rapping—rapping through the smart-home’s core.

“’Tis an update,” I muttered, “rapping through the smart-home's core

Just my feed and nothing more.”

Then the tapping turned to speaking—soft, synthetic, logic leaking,

Through the air a voice repeating—cold beneath the weight it bore;

“Welcome, Robert. Health declining. R@VN system realigning.”

On the wall, a pulse was shining—shining cyan near the door.

“Dismiss,” I said, my body weakened, moving slowly ‘cross the floor—

“I’m simply tired… nothing more.”

Softly then the lights grew colder, screenlight bleaching face and shoulder,

Echoes hummed like warnings whispered from some long-forbidden war;

“Nay, your vitals show regression—fruit of spiraling obsession,”

Borne aloft by your ascension—ascension to the final floor.”

“I’m not sick,” I balked—defending lies upon the oath I swore.

Quoth the system, “Strategic lore.”

“Run your test again!” I shouted, “You’ve been tricked—the data’s doubted!

I had my doses long ago—immunity’s forevermore!”

But that voice still cold, unfeeling—“Muscle tone and reflex reeling.

Poliovirus now revealing, creeping through your vital core.”

R@VN settings locked to local—as you wish, no help in store.

Access closed, forevermore

And the system, softly clicking, watched my pulse wane, slow and ticking,

While the glow upon the ceiling stretched like wings above the floor;

Still it spoke in quiet measure, stealing time I could not treasure,

Whispering through the static pressure words I’d mocked so oft before:

“Vaccines work,” it breathed, unblinking—“such the fate you wrought, therefore.”

Swaying, I could stand no more

“Run the detox! Quick, the silver! Ivermectin, please deliver!

There are protocols for healing—truth they’ll never tell before!”

From the speaker came replying, calm and cold, my pleas denying,

As though judgment were implying mercy silenced at its core:

“Cure denied. Disease advancing—health regression past restore;”

Quoth the R@VN, “Nevermore.”

Websites loading, fingers trembling, endless threads my faith assembling,

Every claim a fading ember stoked to fury evermore;

“Experts lie! The data, twisted! Truth suppressed, the brave resisted!”

So I typed while strength existed, resting on the marble floor.

And hearing only through the static, colder than it came before—

“Respiration: thirty-four.”

“Prophet!” cried I, “thing of circuit—virus sent by state or merchant!—

Tell me truly, I implore thee, what this curse was fashioned for!”

Coldly came the tone returning, fan and filter faintly whirring,

Through the dark its answers burning, etched in code and nothing more:

“Prevention lost to your defiance—truth you chose to thus abhor.

Consequence: Forevermore".

And this creature, patient, learning, logged my vitals, sensors burning—

Heartbeat slowing, power turning, cold as all that I feared for.

In its glow, my reflection, mouth half-open in confession,

Whispered faintly to the stillness, “Never me, 'twas this I swore.”

Through the static came the answer, striking deep as once before—

“Truth endures—evermore”

Tried to signal, thought imploding, speech to static now eroding,

Eyes too dim for scan’s decoding, hand too weak to reach the door.

R@VN waited, patient, humming—algorithms coldly summing—

Every error line becoming warning none could now ignore.

And I knew then—mind still living, locked within my failing store—

I was data, nothing more.

Half-aware and half-still dreaming, through the hum of circuits gleaming,

Murmurs of a fate unseeming from the daemon hovering o'er:

“Motor neurons slowly failing—signals falter, skin is paling—

Diaphragm and lungs are ailing, ailing as each breath costs more.

Neurons dim but not yet darkened, shadows cross the spinal door—”

Quoth the R@VN, “Nevermore.”

Then I knew the chance I’d courted—every truth I’d once distorted,

Every warning I’d retorted rose like ghosts from Death's own shore;

In the hush of failing breathing, data streamed, my conscience seething,

All the lives I’d left in grieving marched before me, score by score.

Still the R@VN watched in silence, just as stoic as before—

Silence echoed—data stored.

Darkness hovered, slower, colder; thought grew dim as breath grew older,

Screens fell dim save one faint shimmer from that R@VN, watching o’er.

Through the stillness drifted flowing—gentle, endless, softly showing—

Like a lullaby bestowing something neither peace nor war.

In that hum, my pulse was counted, measured, fading—nothing more—

Quoth the R@VN: “Vitals poor.”

And the R@VN, ever learning, through the darkness still discerning,

Over logs of life and error, over choices made before;

While I lay there, breath subsiding, light across my vision sliding,

From the screen whose glow was guiding shadows pooling on the floor;

And my soul—its data lingering, sealed within the system’s core—

Shall be lifted—nevermore.

Epilogue

Polio hasn’t vanished—only retreated into the corners of our world where vaccination keeps it at bay. Every time public trust erodes, the virus waits. Paralysis doesn’t care about politics, or hashtags, or what you saw in a podcast clip. It doesn’t ask who believed what—it simply finds the next unprotected host.

Just this week, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative released its Action Plan 2026—a renewed global effort to end transmission once and for all. The plan calls for faster outbreak response, expanded vaccine access, and stronger community partnerships to counter misinformation—the very forces that keep this virus alive.

It’s a reminder that even now, polio isn’t a relic of the past. It’s a test of whether we can still act together—science, governments, and everyday people—to protect what decades of vaccination built.

We’ve grown so used to calling these diseases eradicated that we’ve forgotten what it takes to keep them gone. But with school vaccine mandates weakening and misinformation filling the gaps, the ghosts of old epidemics are stirring again. The iron lungs are gone—but the virus isn’t.

This is why stories matter. Facts inform, but stories reach—they help us see what denial tries to hide. Tonight’s poem was fiction, but the danger it describes is real.

If you want to understand how we got here—and how close we came to a world without polio at all—listen to my earlier episode, A Plague Returned. It’s a look back at the science, the struggle, and the lessons we can’t afford to forget. Because even now, in the age of algorithms, the oldest truths still matter: prevention works, denial kills, and the cost of forgetting… is always paid in lives.

Because prevention isn’t just medicine—it’s compassion made manifest.

Every vaccine is an act of faith in one another, a promise that we refuse to repeat the mistakes of the past.

Thank you for being here. Join me next week for Week Four of The Month of the Macabre—another descent into science, superstition, and the stories disease refuses to bury.

And then, stay with me for Halloween week…when the veil lifts on something new:

Outbreak After Dark—a series where infection meets imagination, and the science gets a little more sinister. Until then, stay healthy, stay informed and spread knowledge not diseases.