This news quiz accompanies the article ‘Take the Jab to the People’ and links to the theme of immunity.
QUESTIONS
1. The pupils carried out a literature review for their extended project in which they examined the relationship between vaccination rate and infection risk. Explain the two concepts in your own words.
2. The article reports that the vaccination rate for MMR (mumps, measles and rubella) is declining in the Netherlands. Why can a falling vaccination rate lead to the return of measles in the Netherlands?
3. Explain why a high vaccination rate also offers protection to people who have not themselves been vaccinated.
4. The article states that natural immunity can vary from disease to disease. Natural immunity means that your body builds up its own defences without you having received a vaccination. Vaccination improves your body’s defences against the disease. Explain how vaccination supports the immune system when an infection occurs.
5. Does vaccination support the specific or the non-specific immune response? Explain your answer.
ANSWERS
1. Vaccination rate: the percentage of people in a population who have been vaccinated. Infection risk: the probability that a person becomes infected with a pathogen and falls ill.
2. Because fewer people are protected through vaccination, the virus can spread more easily. If too few people are vaccinated, herd immunity breaks down and outbreaks can occur again.
3. When the vaccination rate is high, the virus can barely spread because almost everyone is immune. This means the chance of unvaccinated individuals – such as infants or people in poor health – coming into contact with the virus is very small.
4. A vaccine contains harmless components of a pathogen. This prompts the immune system to produce memory cells and antibodies. If a real infection occurs, the body can therefore respond much more rapidly and powerfully, meaning you do not become ill, or become only mildly ill.
5. Vaccination supports the specific immune response, because the immune system learns to produce antibodies and memory cells that are directed precisely against one particular virus.