introduction to microeconomics PDF

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NOVA – Calling the Shots In the U.S., more than ______ percent of parents vaccinate their children, and most follow the recommended schedule. That's up to 28 immunizations in the first two years of life, to protect against ______ different diseases. Whooping Cough A generation ago, whooping cough was rarely seen in developed countries. Now it's back. In 2012, there were nearly 50,000 cases in the U.S. and ______ deaths. Babies too young to get the pertussis shot may have no protection. And because the vaccine's effectiveness can wear off after a few years, older children and ___________________________ are also vulnerable. ___________ of all infants younger than one will be hospitalized; about one in 100 dies. Measles Since the beginning of our century there have been outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases, flaring up like so many wildfires. In 2011, there were over __________ measles cases across Europe. Although the disease is often mild, thousands had serious complications; eight died. _________________ were hardest hit, especially those too young to be vaccinated. How is measles spread?

__________ of people who are exposed to the virus and don't have immunity get the disease. In three months, more than ________ people were exposed to the measles virus in the Brooklyn area. Fifty-eight were infected, including two pregnant women. One miscarried. All were confirmed as unvaccinated at the time of infection.

Vaccination In California, almost __________ percent of children are exempt, and in some schools it's more than 30 percent. Fifty years ago, you asked any parent, any grandparent about polio, about measles, about pertussis and they knew cases. It was part of their daily existence.

What's changed now?

Human history is scarred with stories of deadly germs destroying lives. Five-hundred years ago, about _________________ children died before the age of five. But then, we began to fight back. Vaccination evolved from a type of ____________________________, at least 1,000 years ago. In India, when a wave of smallpox approached a town, there are tales of people doing something extraordinary, they lined up to actually buy the disease. Brahmin healers would take a cloth and rub the person's upper arm, then they would _________________________, just enough to draw blood. Finally, they would then apply dried smallpox ______________, taken from patients who had survived the disease. Most people would get sick but recover. From that point on they were protected. Over one thousand years ago, these Brahmins had observed one of the basic principles of immunization, that you rarely get infected twice. Europe, where over 400,000 people were dying from smallpox every year. An English mother, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, wrote of seeing _________________ women deliberately inoculating their children with smallpox, using a method similar to the Brahmins. Lady Mary successfully inoculated her own son and introduced the technique to England. People didn't understand why it worked, and it was never risk-free, but the smallpox death rate dropped, from around ______ percent to _______ percent. Seventy years later, an English doctor named Edward Jenner took the next vital step. He demonstrated that deliberate infection with a mild, non-fatal disease, called "___________," would protect against smallpox. Immunity Immunity is a natural defense system of the human body. It depends on the _____________ of the blood to rapidly, rapidly, rapidly get you protected against the disease. Imagine millions of immune cells, such as white blood cells, all on the lookout for specific germs. If they spot something foreign, like flu, they prepare to fight. When that flu bug enters your body, the white cells like to move in on it, and they get a bit angry. The immune cells arm themselves and then replicate, creating an army of clones. Then, launching powerful germ-seeking agents, called "_____________________," they tag the germs for disposal. Once the germ is removed, the immune army disbands, but they leave behind

"_________________________." Their job is to remember the invader and to sound the alarm if it ever appears again. A vaccine, in effect, sends in an imposter: a weakened or dead part of the germ, just enough to be recognized. The immune cells mount the defense. Because the threat is low, they quickly disband, but the all-important _______________________ have been created. The immune system is now prepared for the real germ. To arm our immune system against multiple germs, different vaccines can be combined. This reduces the number of shots we need and studies show it to be safe. Herd Immunity For highly infectious diseases like measles, we need _________ percent of the community vaccinated for herd immunity to hold. If the rate drops, even just a few percent, herd immunity can collapse. In France, when measles vaccination rates were around 89 percent the impact was dramatic. In 2007, there were around 40 cases of measles across France. Then, in 2008, a 10-year-old girl returned from holiday in Austria. She went back to school and played with some friends. Several days later, the girls became ill. The measles infection spread from district to district, infecting the susceptible population. In 2011, there were almost ______________ cases; at least six people died. Low vaccination rates can also be fuelled by mistrust and amplified by frightening stories. And what's the most emotional story? The story of some child being hurt. Dravet Syndrome Dravet syndrome is caused by mutations in a particular gene, called SCN1A, which impact key pathways in the brain. These are usually new mutations, not something passed on from the child's parents. In 2006, the team made a key discovery: the majority of the children who had prolonged seizures after vaccination, also had a __________________ causing Dravet syndrome. The gene is the cause of the Dravet syndrome, and the vaccine is, at most, a trigger for a seizure. And anybody with epilepsy has triggers for their seizures. They're not causative, they're triggers. So, you can have genes causing your epilepsy, but triggers are commonly sleep deprivation, stress and, in this situation, vaccination is a trigger. The majority of children have no side effects from a vaccine. Some may experience slight swelling at the injection site, or develop a _______________-, a normal immune response.

Occasionally, children can have a seizure after a vaccine, but this is usually a brief, one-time event, with no damage. Polio In the 1950s, tens of thousands of American children were paralyzed by polio, and thousands of them died. It was one of the most feared diseases of the 20th century. Thanks to the injectable "Salk" vaccine and later, the oral "Sabin" vaccine, polio rates plummeted by __________ percent. The disease largely vanished from the U.S. But the oral polio vaccine carried a risk: there was a small chance that the weakened virus within it could mutate and actually cause polio, a risk of around one in 2.4-million doses. By 1994, the only cases of polio in the U.S. were those caused by ________________________. In the year 2000, across the U.S., the oral vaccine was replaced by a safer _______________ version. Autism In 1998, an English doctor, Andrew Wakefield, argued there was a link between autism and MMR, the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine. His study of _______ children was published in a major medical journal, The Lancet. A search began, to see if the link between autism and the MMR vaccine could be confirmed. Scientists examined the medical records of hundreds of thousands of children. But study after study revealed that whether the children were vaccinated or not, the _______________________________________________________. No one could replicate Andrew Wakefield's findings. Eventually, that study was shown to be fraudulent, and it was withdrawn. Similar studies failed to find any link between autism and a mercury-based preservative, called thimerosal. Still other studies failed to find any link between autism and the number or timing of vaccines. The genetics are pointing to early developmental processes, somewhere between ______ and ________ weeks or so of gestation. We don't know everything that causes autism at this point, but all of the genetics is pointing to fetal origin. HPV Vaccine H.P.V. is the most common cancer-causing virus on Earth. Around 80 percent of Americans will catch it at some stage in their lives. For most, it's harmless, but for some it causes cancer.

Every year, over 25,000 H.P.V.-related cancers occur in the U.S. Many are cervical cancer, in females, or throat cancers, in males. Around 60-million doses of the H.P.V. vaccine have been given in the U.S. Like all vaccines, it's carefully monitored for safety. There have been claims of rare, serious reactions, even deaths. These have been carefully investigated. There are no serious adverse events associated with this vaccine in a causal way. This is one of the safest vaccines that we have to offer, and it prevents cancer. The sex part, the way in which you get the target disease is irrelevant. We don't talk about diphtheria and how you can get diphtheria before we give the Tdap vaccine. How they're getting exposed is irrelevant to the ability to prevent the disease.

One of the things we have to remember, in medicine, is that it's a balancing act. Really, everything is measuring risks versus benefits. This is true of vaccines as well. There are risks; there are benefits. The risks happen to be miniscule of serious side reactions, the benefits are enormous....