• Question: What helps a disease move successfully?

    Asked by Maya to Kevin, Liz, Beccy, Rosie on 14 Jun 2017.
    • Photo: anon

      anon answered on 14 Jun 2017:


      To improve chances of moving to distant locations successfully:

      It shouldn’t kill off the host too quickly, otherwise the person dies before they move.

      It shouldn’t make the host immediately look sick. Otherwise the rest of us will not let them onto the bus, train, plane, …

      The pathogen (the bacterium, virus, parasite) shouldn’t be too sensitive to temperature or humidity so it can spread in lots of different environments.

    • Photo: Liz Buckingham-Jeffery

      Liz Buckingham-Jeffery answered on 14 Jun 2017:


      Hi Maya,

      Now that travelling by plane is much more common, diseases have the potential to spread a long way because people travel a long way.

      So as well as the things that Christl said, our human behaviours help diseases spread successfully.

    • Photo: Rosie Fok

      Rosie Fok answered on 14 Jun 2017:


      To add to what Christl and Liz have said, infections can also be spread by vectors (such as insects), or transmitted by fomites (inanimate objects, like door handles or computer keyboards that we might touch without washing our hands and then infect ourselves). They can also get into our food supply or water sources and spread that way.

      There was a headline last week about a well known brand of chocolate bar being recalled because they were worried that they were contaminated with Salmonella, a bacterium that can cause gastrointestinal infection.

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