Thank you for the detailed explanation - I would still say that I am not fully convinced by the "every intelligent person" ideology. I am still 25 and had only had exposure to so many sciences and hence knowledge for me to be in the intelligent set. My firm belief when I step in for my GMAT would be to read the question stem and try to get whatever I can get out of it (not applying anything I personally know about the topic)
rsaahil90 wrote:
Hello Mike
I am still not able to digest this logic - Given that we are being asked for a conclusion, we are assuming a lot of things here:
1. The virus is passive. We don't know as to whether the vaccine terminated the virus or rendered it passive only
2. Passive virus cannot become active (in one individual and spread in adults) and hence can only affect children. For e.g. if instead of children in option A, if we would have said older population (may be they lost immunity), will this option still be a correct one
In what I've learned so far for conclusion questions --> Whatever exists in the stem is truth in entirety and hence I am skeptical on the reasoning you have provided.
Would be happy to hear from you.
Thanks
Saahil
Dear
rsaahil90,
I'm happy to help.
I think, in part, the problem is that you don't understand the basics of vaccines and viruses.
Right now, in all likelihood, you and I and most of the people we know have the polio virus in our bodies. We got the virus sometime during our lives, but because we were fortunate to get the polio vaccine when we were young, our immune system is educated about how to fight the polio virus, so we never developed any of the symptoms of polio. You see, a vaccine does
not terminate a virus: a vaccine does
nothing directly to the virus itself. The job of a vaccine is to educate the human immune system, as it were to "teach" the immune system how to fight a disease, so that we don't have to go through having the disease. Every vaccine you and I have received has taught out how to fight those particular viruses (polio, mumps, measles, diphtheria, etc.) In all likelihood, we have encountered all these virus during our lives and may carry these viruses in our body. Because our immune systems know how to fight these diseases, we don't get these diseases, but the viruses are there, and theoretically, at any time we could infect an unvaccinated person, if we ever were to encounter one.
So far as I know, the immunity that one gets from vaccines does not diminish in old age---old folks have other immune problems, but I have never heard of an old person getting polio or mumps or measles or etc. after they had been vaccinated in youth.
The word "passive" in this context is not a medical term: I was simply trying to describe the situation of these viruses in our bodies: they are present but they don't make us sick. Once again, if the virus is present, then even though I am not sick, I could be carrying it and could infect someone else, if that other person had not been vaccinated.
Once again, all this is not specialized knowledge. The details of exactly how a vaccine works, exactly how vaccines are manufactured, the biochemistry of the immune system's response to them---all that is specialized biological knowledge. The overview I have given, by contrast, is something that every intelligent person should know. Every intelligent person should know that antibiotics kill bacteria but have zero effect on viruses. Similarly, everyone should know that a vaccine enhances the human immune system, enabling the immune system to fight a virus, but the vaccine itself does zero to the virus. No medicine and no drug can fight a virus: the most drugs can do is manage symptoms. If a virus is in, say a pot of water, we can destroy the virus by boiling the water. We can destroy virus outside the body by heat or chemical means, but a virus inside the body is considerably harder to fight. Basically, the only thing on Earth that we know that can fight and destroy a virus inside us is the human immune system itself, and vaccines brilliantly harness this power of the immune system to fight particular viruses. Once again, all this is in the realm that every intelligent person should know, and this "background knowledge" is crucial for understanding GMAT CR questions.
Does all this make sense?
Mike