Science Connections

Work #1 - Importance of the Annual Flu Vaccine:

My first piece of work is my quiz answer about why it is important to get the flu vaccine every year both on an individual and a societal level, which shows my mastery of the course objective because it demonstrates the imporance of the flu vaccine and shared scientific knowledge to the society.

It is very important to get the flu vaccine every year for a number of reasons. On an individual level, it helps your body develop the memory cells that it needs to help fight the flu in the event you become infected, thus helping you not get sick and not passing the flu onto others. But the reason we get vaccines is not for ourselves but to help protect the society as a whole. There is a great quote from the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, "what's bad for the hive is bad for the bee" in which Marcus Aurelius is saying that by taking care of the hive, or society, then the bees, or people, will benefit and be better off because of it. Through vaccinating ourselves to the flu, society as a whole benefits because fewer people get sick allowing them to continue to contribute to the economy and the betterment of society, the spread of the flu is minimized which helps keep the most vulnerable in the society healthy and improving quality of life, and it reduces healthcare costs which allows for the money saved to be invested into new projects including medical research that can benefit society as a whole and everyone individually substantially in the long run.

Work #2 - Secondary Source Analysis:

My second piece of work is my secondary source analysis media piece, which shows my mastery of the course objective because it demonstrates that my ability to analyze and critic scientific articles.

1. From Wired Science I read the article Here's the Plan to End Malaria With Crispr-Edited Mosquitoes, by Megan Molteni from September 24th, 2018. You can view the article here.
2. The article is about the infectious disease Malaria, which is caused by the plasmodium parasite and is transmitted by mosquitoes.
3. Overall, I thought the article was of a high quality. The author did a good job of simplifying complicated concepts in a way that maintained usable information. There did not appear to be any underlying agenda that would undermine the author’s credibility. The style of the writing was good and kept the reader engaged. The source is relatively recent, since it is from 2018, but an updated article about more recent developments may be preferable. Finally, the author did not include any editorial opinions. Due to these six reasons, the article appears to be of a high quality.