Vocabulary
A widespread occurrence of an infectious disease over a whole country or the world at a particular time.
What is a pandemic?
This virus is among the most highly contagious diseases known to humans with an Ro of 12-18. It spreads when an infected person breathes, coughs or sneezes.
What are measles?
This vaccine lessens the severity of disease by teaching the immune system to recognize and fight the virus that causes the disease. It may not prevent you from catching the disease but it can make you less sick and shorten the time you are sick.
What is the COVID vaccine? Or what is the flu shot?
The time from exposure to when signs or symptoms of the disease appear (the incubation period) for this disease is 2 to 21 days, but the median time for symptoms to emerge is 8-10 days.
What is Ebola?
Research has found a significant correlation between what common item and reduced academic achievement because constant interaction with this item saps students' focus, making it harder for them to study effectively.
What is their beloved phone?
The metric used to measure the transmissibility of infectious disease. (How contagious is the disease)?
What is R0 (R naught)?
This infection is transmitted by direct or indirect contact with the blood, body fluids, or secretions of infected people, but only when they show symptoms. It cannot be transmitted by air and has an Ro of between 1.5-2 depending on the outbreak.
What is Ebola?
The correct dosage of inactivated virus vaccine is 99% to 100% effective in preventing this disease, so while it was horrific for a lot of people in the U.S. and still infects people in other parts of the world, we can be thankful it was eradicated in the U.S. in 1979 because of this vaccine.
What is the Polio Vaccine?
An infected person can shed virus with these tiny particles that can stay in the air for a long time, and travel longer distances. You can breathe them in even if you're some distance away from the source of the infected person. Diseases that spread this way are dangerous in enclosed spaces with poor ventilation.
What are airborne particles?
Before 1916, when five people experienced this event along the coast of New Jersey, this event was not thought to be a threat to humans.
What are shark attacks?
What are fomites?
This disease is transmitted through contaminated food or water. Is still a risk in in communities that lack access to safe drinking water or adequate sanitation. Was made famous in the early 1900s by asymptomatic carrier Mary Mallon.
What is Typhoid Fever?
The WHO and NIH worked with public health agencies around the world to develop this vaccine in response to an outbreak of this disease in West Africa that then spread to Western countires--and showed up in NYC in 2015. The vaccine is 95–100% effective against this horrific virus
What is the Ebola vaccine?
This virus has many variants, the median incubation of the original virus was 5-6 days with a range of 2–14 days after initial exposure; the newer strains of this virus have a shorter incubation period with a median incubation period of 2–3 days.
What is COVID?
The understaffed agency charged with monitoring this disease here in NYC is struggling to respond to new cases — fueling fears of a resurgence decades after the nation got TB under control. The city has confirmed about 500 cases in 2023, an increase of roughly 20% from the year before. Mr. Kigel saw an ad about this disease on a bus.
What is tuberculosis?
The proportion of people who die from a specified disease among all individuals diagnosed with the disease over a certain period of time.
What is Case Fatality Rate (CFR)?
This virus is very contagious, boasting an Ro of 10-12. It is fecal-oral and spreads through person-to-person contact. Between 2 and 10 out of 100 people who have paralysis from this infection die, because the virus affects the muscles that help them breathe.
What is Polio?
Name the three diseases eradicated through vaccines by the MMR shot. Two of these three diseases we have hardly mentioned, and few people in this country have to worry about thanks to vaccination.
What are measles, mumps, and rubella?
An infected person can shed virus and spread disease with these larger and heavier particles that are released when you cough, sneeze, talk, or even breathe hard. They do not travel far and tend to fall to the ground or land on surfaces.
What are droplets?
Mr. Kigel told a story about having to rush his son to the ER when he began to have trouble breathing with this disease back in Dec 2015.
What is Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV)?
The period between exposure to an infection and the appearance of the first symptoms.
What is the incubation period?
Although highly contagious, the CFR of this virus was lower than SARS (Severe acute respiratory syndrome 9.5%) and the horrifyingly deadly MERS (Middle East respiratory syndrome 34.4%) but was higher than that of the typical seasonal flu (0.1%).
What was the original strain of COVID-19?
This thoroughly discredited and ostracised former doctor used a now-discredited paper to attempt to falsely link autism to the MMR vaccine.
Who is Andrew Wakefield?
Hand sanitizer can’t break the protective shield of this sturdy and non-lethal but quite nasty virus. Disinfectant cleaners short of bleach are ineffective against this virus. Soap and water won't kill it but can wash it away and keep you safe. If you or someone in your family has it, wash your hands well and wash your hands a lot!
What is Norovirus?
In 2016 an outbreak of this bacterial infection in northern Siberia that killed a child and infected at least seven other people was attributed to a heatwave that melted permafrost and exposed an infected reindeer carcass. Before this, the last outbreak in the region had been in 1941.
What is anthrax?