The Bluetail Moonbeam, endemic to the streams and rivers of Asia, is

Question

The Bluetail Moonbeam, endemic to the streams and rivers of Asia, is regularly imported into the United States by companies wishing to breed it for food. An infectious virus has been threatening Bluetail Moonbeam stocks in the United States. Even before a Bluetail Moonbeam develops any symptoms, biologists can establish the presence of the infection by an inexpensive test for antibodies in the fish's blood. Yet, after the instance of infection, antibodies take about four weeks to appear in the fish's blood, and the test will find no results before then. Catching a live Bluetail Moonbeam and shipping it to the United States takes a little more than a week. Once the Bluetail Moonbeam is in captivity, shippers can eliminate all new sources of infection, but unfortunately, some Bluetail Moonbeams might be infected days or even hours before being caught. Thus, even running the antibody test on each Bluetail Moonbeam entering the country would still allow infected fish into the American stocks.

Which of the following, if performed by the government, could logically be expected to overcome the problem with the plan to limit the spread of this virus in the Bluetail Moonbeam?

A) Funding research into either an inoculation or a cure for this viral infection.
B) Quarantining each imported Bluetail Moonbeam for at least three weeks, then performing the antibody test on each, and allowing only the uninfected to move into industrial stocks.
C) Requiring each Bluetail Moonbeam sold to be tagged with a tag indicating their date of capture.
D) Launching an educational campaign to make those industries that breed the Bluetail Moonbeam aware of the limitations of the antibody test for the virus.
E) Tracking the imported Bluetail Moonbeam into industry held stock, and for each imported fish, four weeks after capture, removing it from stock to be tested; only uninfected fish would be returned to stock.

saikiransomala · Answer

Hi Harley1980,

I could arrive at Option B by calculating the overall time period required for the antibodies to exhibit visible signs. 
1 week of import time + 3 weeks of quarantine time = 4 weeks

Option E talks about a plan which is for 1 week + 4 week = 5 weeks. Thus the overall time frame is too long and this is unnecessary.

Correct me if my approach is wrong.

Regards
Sai Kiran

ada453 · Answer

There's an easier way to think about this. The fish doesn't develop antibodies for the first four weeks, but that doesn't mean they're not infected. If they still live with the rest of the fish during that time, then they risk infecting others.

However, if you never introduce them to the general population in the first place, but instead quarantine them until the incubation period is over, then it will help mitigate the spread of the disease.

RK84 · Answer

I do not see any issue with option E. It looks foolproof. Both B & E satisfies the question which has been raised in the stem. Am i missing something here?
How do we select the most appropriate right answer between two right answers? It is not easy to assume that the infected fish will infect others as there is not information on whether the disease is contagious.

nks2611 · Answer

option E says that remove the infected fish without being tested, so we cannot determine that whether fish are virus infected or not .

so option B should be the right answer.
please correct if i am wrong ?

DmitryFarber · Answer

RK84 , choice E doesn't address the problem as posed, which is to prevent the entry of infected fish into American stocks. E allows the fish in, with a provision for them to be tested later. However, in the meantime, they  are  in American stocks. This not only violates our objective, but also allows infected fish to infect others that are  not  tracked!

(You're right that we shouldn't have to choose between two correct answers. So unless we're working with questions of suspect quality, we should assume that the right answer is the  only  right answer and work actively to find fault with the wrong ones! Even on non-official questions, we can usually do this with sufficient effort, and this is where a lot of our learning happens, so don't be too quick to assume that the fault is in the question itself.)

DmitryFarber · Answer

nks2611, you're correct about B. But I'm not sure what you mean about E. It says that the fish will be tested, and only the uninfected ones will be put back in. In any case, E is wrong, for the reasons above.

aragonn · Answer

Official Explanation Magoosh:

We import this fish, the Bluetail Moonbeam, and there's the threat of an infectious virus. We want to prevent infected fish from getting into the domestic stocks of these fish and spreading the illness. We can test for antibodies, but the problem is: it takes four weeks from the time of initial infection for enough antibodies to show up in the blood --- before that, the antibody test just doesn't work. Even if we tested each and every fish, some of them might still be infected and thus able to infect other fish, and their infection doesn't show up in the test because the instance of infection immediately preceded their capture. This is a problem we want to solve.

(B) is the credited answer. It takes a little more than a week to ship a caught fish to the US. Once here, we would quarantine them for another three weeks. At that point, over four weeks from their capture, the antibody test would be effective, and we would know that if an individual fish tested negative for antibodies, that fish would be uninfected and could be introduced to domestic stocks without risk.

(A) is not helpful. Yes, it would be great if we could cure the virus, but finding remedies for viruses is not Western Medicine's strong suit --- there are numerous viruses (polio, chickenpox, measles, hepatitis, etc.) for which we have no cure, only vaccines, and for some, from the common cold to Ebola and AIDS, we don't even have a vaccine, despite extensive research. Sure, scientists could try this, but there's no guarantee of success, especially in the short term.

(C) is irrelevant: tagging the fish would not solve anything. Furthermore, if infected fish are introduced into domestic stocks, other fish would be infected, irrespective of when they had been originally caught.

(D) is not helpful. Educating anyone about the disease is not going to stop the spread of the disease if they keep introducing at-risk fish into domestic stocks.

(E) is a tricky one. Let's say a particular fish is infected by the virus a few hours before it is caught. It is introduced into the domestic stock, and then four weeks later, when the antibody test would be effective, it would be pulled from the stock, found to be infected, and then not introduced to the stock. After that point, of course, it could infect no other fish. The problem is: during the first few weeks, that infected fish would be spreading the infection in the domestic stock. In this scenario, once any fish is identified as infected, we will know that it already has been infecting the domestic stock. This doesn't solve the problem.

naturalimproviser · Answer

A) Funding research into either an inoculation or a cure for this viral infection.
B) Quarantining each imported Bluetail Moonbeam for at least three weeks, then performing the antibody test on each, and allowing only the uninfected to move into industrial stocks.
C) Requiring each Bluetail Moonbeam sold to be tagged with a tag indicating their date of capture.
D) Launching an educational campaign to make those industries that breed the Bluetail Moonbeam aware of the limitations of the antibody test for the virus.
E) Tracking the imported Bluetail Moonbeam into industry held stock, and for each imported fish, four weeks after capture, removing it from stock to be tested; only uninfected fish would be returned to stock.

You are right, it is easy to narrow down the option choices to B and E, but then there is a catch.
Option B talks about  Quarantining  the fishes (which means to put them in isolation) for three weeks and then checking them for the antibodies, which makes sense as the virus takes four weeks to be detectable and the fishes would have already spent one week while being transported to the US.

On the other hand, option E talks about  tracking  the imported fishes but not isolating them, it is obvious that the virus is infectious or how else would it have transferred from one fish to the other. So, this poses a risk as by merely tracking the fishes for a month, the infected fishes could still spread the virus to the other fishes.

Hence, B is the right choice.

VerbalBot · Answer

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The Bluetail Moonbeam, endemic to the streams and rivers of Asia, is

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