Reference no: EM132565785

Background

Vaccinations are given to promote the development of antibodies without the animal actually getting the sick with the disease. Vaccinations come in several forms, but the most common types are inactivated viruses or bacteria or attenuated bacteria or viruses. Attenuated means the disease has been crippled so it can't cause the illness, but is still technically "alive" so the animal may get a very mild form of the illness. The inactivated vaccines are "dead" often fragments of the original pathogen are attached to something else to attract B cells. As the body removes the attenuated or inactivated pathogen the adaptive immune system learns and begins making antibodies against that disease preventing future infections.

Recently a large movement has started that claims vaccines are unnecessary or claim that they even cause autism. This second claim, has been conclusively proven false and was all based on a single error ridden study. See https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2831678/ and https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3136032/ for more information on this. As to vaccines being unnecessary for certain diseases today lets study to see how vaccines protect more than just the people who receive the vaccine.
In every population there will be people who's immune system is weakened. It could be genetic, missing or damaged genes, or the person is elderly, very young, allergic, or undergoing chemo or radiation therapy, which can cripple the immune system. These people often can't get vaccinations or if given, they won't produce antibodies or sufficient numbers of antibodies to prevent them from getting sick.

Procedure

visit https://fred.publichealth.pitt.edu/measles

This is a program that simulates the spread of the measles. On the left side of the screen will assume that only 80% of the people are vaccinated, & the right will assume that 95% of the people are vaccinated.

1. Select District of Columbia & then for the city select Washington D.C. Answer the questions about this simulation.

2. Now change the state to North Carolina. For the city select Hickory. Run the simulation again. Answer the questions on the sheet.

3. Now change the state to New York & the city to New York. Run the simulation again. Answer the questions on the sheet.
test indicate?

Disease Spread Simulation Sheet

1) How long did it take for the disease to disappear on the vaccinated side for D.C.?

2) Make a hypothesis on why the 80% vaccinated side of D.C. Eventually saw the disease begin to slow down? About how many days did it take to slow down?

3) How does each side compare to D.C.?

4) Hickory has a population of about 40,000 people & D.C. Has about 630,000 people. What does this tell you about how population density affects disease spread?

5) How does New York city compare to D.C & Hickory? Explain why you think that is the case.

6) Using what you've learned by seeing these simulations & given that measles & covid-19 are both airborne proximity diseases, why are all the governors capping the size of gatherings?

7) For a blood borne (or STD) based disease like that simulated with the ELISA part of this lab, would limiting the size of gatherings be as effective at stopping the spread of those diseases? Explain.