Conventional wisdom suggests vaccinating elderly people first in flu season, bec

游客2024-01-12  33

问题 Conventional wisdom suggests vaccinating elderly people first in flu season, because they are at greatest risk of dying if they contract the virus. This year’s flu virus poses particular risk to elderly people and almost none at all to younger people, particularly children. Nevertheless, health professionals are recommending vaccinating children first against the virus rather than elderly people.
Which of the following, if true, provides the strongest reason for the health professionals’ recommendation?

选项 A、Children are vulnerable to dangerous infections when their immune systems are severely weakened by other diseases.
B、Children are particularly unconcerned with hygiene and therefore are the group most responsible for spreading the flu virus to others.
C、The vaccinations received last year will confer no immunity to this year’s flu virus.
D、Children who catch one strain of the flu virus and then recover are likely to develop immunity to at least some strains with which they have not yet come in contact.
E、Children are no more likely than adults to have immunity to a particular flu virus if they have never lived through a previous epidemic of the same virus.

答案 B

解析 Argument Construction
Situation Although this year’s flu virus poses particular risk to elderly people and almost no risk to children, health professionals are recommending vaccinating children before elderly people, contrary to what conventional wisdom recommends.
Reasoning What would help justify the health professionals’ recommendation? Since children will experience almost no risk from the virus, vaccinating them first for their own sake appears unnecessary. However, individuals at no personal risk from a virus can still transmit it to more-vulnerable individuals. If children are especially likely to transmit the virus, it could be reasonable to vaccinate them first in order to protect others, including elderly people, by preventing the virus from spreading. A This might be a reason to vaccinate certain children with severely weakened immune systems, if their weak immune systems would even respond effectively to the vaccine. However, it is not clearly a reason to vaccinate the vast majority of children.
B Correct. This suggests that children are especially likely to transmit the virus even if it does not endanger them. So as explained above, it provides a good reason for the health professionals’ recommendation.
C This might be a good reason to vaccinate everyone, but it is not clearly a reason to vaccinate children before vaccinating elderly people.
D If anything, this would suggest that there might be a reason not to vaccinate children against this year’s strain at all: unvaccinated children who catch this year’s strain, which the argument claims is relatively harmless to children, may develop immunity to more dangerous strains that might arise in the future.
E The argument claims that this year’s virus poses almost no risk to children. So even if they are not technically immune to it, it does not affect them significantly enough to justify vaccinating them before vaccinating elderly people.
The correct answer is B.
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