Contagious Outbreaks

An investigation was necessary to find the cause of the outbreak, and how to stop it from continuing to spread. The campus clinic was interested in testing the following nine patients: Sue, Jill, Anthony, Wanda, Maggie, Maria, Arnie, Marco, and Alvin. All of the students have similar symptoms and agreed to being tested except for Alvin.

A common source outbreak is an outbreak that affects a number of people being exposed to a common pathogen agent or toxin. Back in early 1993 more than 400,000 people were affected with waterborne cryptosporidium infection in the greater Milwaukee area. This massive outbreak was transmitted through the public water supply, caused abdominal cramping, nausea, vomiting, and fever which resulted in watery diarrhoea.

The limitations of the results were constrained by the self-reporting of the participants along with the sole use of college students as the sample population. Gender may have also influenced the study, as a participant may have known and intermingled with the gender of the person who was offered in the vignette (p.746). Furthermore, it was addressed that the possibility of more research should be done on the Social Distance Scale (SDC) to validate its use in data collection practices.

Impetigo is a contagious bacterial infection that occurs in the epidermal layer of the skin. It is caused mainly by staphylococcal and streptococcal bacteria. The two bacteria mentioned in the previous sentence are types of coccal bacteria, which is round or spherical in shape; streptococci occurs in chains while staphylococci occurs in clusters or groups. This infection arises most commonly around the nose and mouth and is most prominent among children. There are two types of this skin disease: bullous and nonbullous impetigo. Bullous impetigo is only created from staph bacteria, and cells are formed that lessen adhesion between the dermis

Kissing, sneezing, sharing/ touching an object, such as a doorknob, soon after an infected person, you might be exposed to infection. Transmission occurs when you touch your mouth, nose, or eyes before thoroughly washing your hands. Germs can also be spread through contaminated blood products, medical supplies or sexual

Smallpox is a highly infectious and contagious disease known to humanity as one of the world’s most devastating diseases. Caused by the “variola virus”, a linear, double-stranded deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) virus that replicate in the cytoplasm and a member of the genus Orthopoxvirus, in the Poxviridae family, it remains the only disease known in human history to have been fully eradicated after having affected approximately 300 million people in the 1900’s. In order to replicate, the variola virus produces a variety of specialized proteins not produced by other DNA viruses, the most important of which is a viral-associated DNA-dependent RNA polymerase. Continuing to affect humans since the early 6th century, Smallpox was finally declared to have been eradicated in 1980 by the World Health

4. The research study is a longitudinal study as it involved researching the same participants from sixth grade to ninth grade. A longitudinal study was best for this study as it examines the development of changes in adolescences. The research methods used were based on quantitative methods. The first method used to measure mixed-sex friendship groups was friend nominations. The friendship method allowed students to chose two best friends and five close friends. The next method was group-level network measures. Using the nominations, students are grouped until no new changes are made. Next, demographics played a large role in assessing mixed-sex friendship groups. It is important for students to identify their race and gender, as a majority of the race was white. Behavioural characteristics were then studied by using self-reports.

Their first categories of measures are friendship nominations in which students report their friend group, which enabled the researchers to define groups; “group level network measures” were found using an algorithm and refer to the researcher’s ability to define relatively close groups. Additionally, “individual-level network measures” refer to an adolescent’s relevance or “centrality” to the group. Students self reported demographics like race, gender, home background, etc. The researchers also asked the students to report behavioral characteristics, such as “family relations,” “religious attendance,” “delinquency”, in terms of petty crime, and “alcohol and cigarette use”. Finally, the researchers measured means for peer groups on behavioral characteristics. Of course, with self-reporting, there is the chance that students do not accurately report their behavior, especially prudent to this would be reporting of delinquent activity. The researchers analyzed the data, categorizing the groups as “all boys,” “mostly boys,” “mixed-sex,” “mostly girls,” and “all girls.” ANOVAs were used to compare the groups. They then tested the regression between “membership in a mixed-sex group as a function of problem behaviors” as well as the other way

The movie Contagion gives a perspective of a worldwide pandemic as it begins and spreads throughout the world while displaying signs of evolution. The movie begins with a woman, Beth, traveling home from a business trip in Hong Kong. Beth becomes sick with what she thinks is the flu. However, she suffers from a seizure and dies suddenly from an unknown cause. Her son along with several other cases around the world suddenly die after having similar symptoms Her husband Mitch discovers that he is completely immune to the disease. Over the next few days the virus gains the attention of the Center for Disease Control (CDC), World Health Organization (WHO), and the governments of the world. With little known about the virus, the CDC and the WHO struggle to find the origin of the virus or how it works. The disease MEV-1 soon becomes a pandemic as the disease transfers rapidly from human to human through fomites. Society collapsed, which led to complete chaos and instability for not only people but also governments around the world . After several months, a vaccine was created and mass produced and distributed to the general public. The CDC was eventually able to trace the pathogen to the origin and patient zero, Beth.

At ABC Preschool, we strive at keeping the center germ-free and sick-free. We have strict policies set in place to protect all children, so we ask for your cooperation, that if you feel that your child is sick, please do not bring them in. If you are unsure please don’t hesitate to call us or speak with your doctor.

Does the health of your friends’ friends’ friends have any relationship to your own? How about to your outlook on life? Do they care about your general happiness or grumpiness? Your approach to problems and opportunities? In this TED video, Nicholas Christakis, the author of Connected, explores the hidden influence of our social networks. In the video Dr. Christakis discusses some of his findings related directly to health and wellness. Turns out he discovered the widowhood affects. He compared a clusters of body sizes and located through arithmetic that the people around you will be able to have a bearing on your body size. This caused Christakis to see the world in a new way. His first topic, with respect to social networking, was obesity.

The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between social networks and the risk for falls among

The words “infectious disease” have been feared by humans from the time they were initially discovered and this fear continues to persist into the current status of the 21st century. This inherent fear stems from the ability of the tiny, pathogenic microorganisms responsible for these infectious diseases to wipe out thousands, or even millions from the human population. Though some may view infectious disease is an issue of the past, it still wreaks havoc in many of the worlds’ developing nations (Tambo et al., 2016). Developed countries such as Canada and the U.S. have seen an epidemiologic transition of the top killers of disease; moving away from traditional infectious disease to more modern chronic illnesses including cancer and cardiovascular disease (Gordis, 2014). However, developing countries in Africa are lagging behind, and are still experiencing a disproportionate rate of infectious disease. Two of the culprits responsible for these high infectious disease rates in Southern and Western Africa, are HIV and Ebola, respectively (Wainberg et al., 2014).

Over the years, researchers have found that other illnesses are spread from person to person via social contagion. Behavior-based illnesses such as obesity and smoking cessation have been proven to have been spread among peers. Friendships form because of common interests, dislikes and things in common. Friendships are an open path for spread of attitude toward certain things. Both healthy and unhealthy mood spreads and even components of depression, but depression itself does not spread. The authors had not found any evidence of consideration of depression symptoms in previous experiments (Eyre, House, Hill, & Griffiths, 2017).

Of the many diseases spread by insects, none are actually caused by the insects themselves but by other organisms passed on when they feed or bite. Insects are capable of spreading diseases caused by many different types of microorganisms including bacteria, viruses, protozoan and others. Mosquitoes have earned the title of "the most deadly creature on earth." This is due to the fact that they spread serious epidemic diseases such as Malaria, Yellow Fever, African Sleeping Sickness, and West Nile Virus.