Kingdom of Needle and Bone

This is a standalone novella; however, I think it's pretty safe to say, from several places where it says "all the rest came later", and from Grant/McGuire's practice of continually producing more stories with new characters and worldbuilding in her existing universes, that there is going to be a sequel.

This is the somewhat grim story of a potential near-future Earth where escalating noncompliance with vaccinations finally results in herd immunity being impaired to the point where a mutated strain of measles wipes out a large part of the world's population, and successive waves of epidemics kill more and more people.

The story features a doctor, the aunt of Patient Zero, who takes things into her own hands to try to preserve some semblance of the human race when governments fail to take the brutal but necessary steps (which require favoring the small numbers of unexposed, uninfected people).

The author has done extensive research in virology, and has friends at the Centers for Disease Control who serve as consultants -- and this shows in the veracity of the details.

This is a cautionary tale about not just the dangers of non-vaccination, but of the difficulties in defining an answer to the question: when is it okay, and not okay, for the government to tell people what they can do with thier own bodies?

There are no easy answers here, and this is not easy reading -- but there is plenty of food for thought. And the characters are developed enough to make the story feel personal.

I'll be interested to see how a sequel develops this story further.