Case Studies
This was a common source of transmission during the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, and is a reason why cultural practices need to be considered in outbreak response.
What are traditional funeral practices?
This term means a disease is spread by a mosquito, tick, or other insect.
What is vectorborne?
This term refers to the time between exposure and onset of an illness.
What is an incubation period?
West Nile is this type of pathogen.
What is a virus?
This is the transmission route for West Nile.
What is vectorborne (mosquito)?
The legionella outbreak in Hopkins, MN was found to be linked to contamination of one of these structures.
What is a cooling tower?
This term refers to the percentage of infected people who died from their infection.
What is a case fatality rate?
This term refers to the amount of a pathogen a person needs to be exposed to in order for illness to develop?
Infectious dose.
Lyme Disease is caused by this type of pathogen.
What is a bacteria?
This is the transmission route for listeriosis.
What is mpox?
This term means that a disease is occurring at an expected incidence in a particular area.
What is endemic?
This term refers to the vaccination strategy where contacts and often contacts-of-contacts of an infectious person are vaccinated.
What is ring vaccination?
Blastomycosis is this type of pathogen.
What is a fungus?
This is the transmission route for diphtheria.
What is close contact (respiratory droplet, touching contaminated surfaces)? *Note: in cases like this, I'd accept either of these answers
In the London Cholera outbreak there were two outlier groups of people who we would expect to be infected but weren't. One group was factory workers who had their own pump. The other was this group.
Who were brewery workers?
This term refers to an outbreak with a person-to-person source.
What is a propagated/progressive source?
This term refers to outbreaks that can be traced to a single event.
What is a point source?
Diphtheria is caused by this type of pathogen.
What is a bacteria?
This is the transmission route for blastomycosis.
What is inhalation of fungal spores?
The anti-vaccine movement was galvanized after a since-debunked study by Andrew Wakefield and his colleagues linked this vaccine with autism.
What is MMR (measles-mumps-rubella)?
This term refers to treatment (often antibiotics, but not always) provided AFTER exposure to an infectious agent to PREVENT onset of illness.
What is post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP)?
This term refers to a list, like the one in our Anthrax scenario, used to track symptoms, exposure histories, and other information of infected people during an outbreak.
What is a patient line list?
Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) is caused by this type of pathogen.
What is a virus?
This is the transmission route for ehrlichiosis?
What is vectorborne (ticks)?