medium · SAT Reading & Writing
Text 1: Epidemiologists use 'herd immunity' thresholds to determine what percentage of a population must be vaccinated to stop the spread of a disease. For highly contagious viruses like measles, the threshold is estimated at 95%, meaning that below this level, outbreaks are essentially inevitable. Text 2: The 95% threshold assumes a 'homogeneously mixing' population, where everyone has an equal chance of meeting everyone else. In reality, populations are clustered. If vaccination rates are 98% in most areas but only 70% in a few tight-knit communities, outbreaks can still occur even if the national average is well above the threshold.
Based on the texts, how would the author of Text 2 most likely respond to the 'threshold' described in Text 1?
- By arguing that a single national average may fail to account for local variations in vaccination coverage.
- By noting that the first successful vaccine was developed for smallpox in the late eighteenth century.
- By claiming that vaccines have little real effect on outbreaks and that thresholds should be abandoned.
- By insisting that 100% of the population must be vaccinated everywhere before any outbreak can be prevented.
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