Q5 - Recent epidemiological studies

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
Explain Discrepancy (Paradox)

Stimulus Breakdown:
Fact 1: Country X has the lowest incidence of disease P.
Fact 2: People who get disease P in country X are more likely to die from it than anywhere else.

Answer Anticipation:
Given that a country has lowest incidence of a given disease, why are its citizens the ones most likely to die from the disease, if contracted? The paradoxical feeling is supposed to come from the idea that "if country X is so good at getting rid of disease P from occurring, why are they so bad at treating people with disease P?" But one thought that occurs to me is simply that a country with a low occurence of a certain disease is naturally going to be dumber / more clueless about treating that disease. I would assume that Egypt isn't the best place in the world to get your hypothermia treated. Primarily, we need a way to explain why people in country X who get disease P are so likely to die from it.

Correct Answer:
C

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) If we knew that the most contagious / severe form of the disease occurred more in Country X, this would have some explanatory power, but the answer as written doesn't give us all that.

(B) The paradox is only concerned with "residents" of Country X, so this is irrelevant.

(C) Yes! "reported to have contracted disease P" = "diagnosed case of disease P". This helps explain why people in X who are diagnosed with P are so likely to die from it; the reported cases are almost all severe cases of the disease.

(D) Cool, but there still ARE statistics we have to go off. And country X seems to be trending in to two opposite directions. This answer isn't helping to reconcile those.

(E) We don't need to start talking about OTHER fatal illnesses. We need to hear specifically about disease P.

Takeaway/Pattern: Even though I wrote my anticipated answer in the Prephrase section, I don't recommend trying to prephrase Paradox questions. Stay flexible. Often, the correct answer finds a way to explain things that we didn't see coming.

#officialexplanation

[jardinsouslapluie5]

I understand (C).
I want to make sure exactly why (B) is not correct.
Is it because we cannot determine if "most of the fatal cases" involves these "people who do not reside?"
And if "most of fatal cases" DOES involve these "people who do not reside," it still has no effect?

[timmydoeslsat]

Answer choice B is definitely something that cannot help us. Our two statements we want to make work together are...

1) This country has the lowest incidence of a disease of any country.

2) This country's residents that do contract it are more likely to die from it than any other country.

Answer choice B talks about how fatal diseases and people who are not residents. We want something that helps us with the residents of this country that get this disease.

[jimmy902o]

had this one down to C and E but ended up going with E. Is C the better choice because of the weak language in E "more potentially fatal"?

[timmydoeslsat]

had this one down to C and E but ended up going with E. Is C the better choice because of the weak language in E "more potentially fatal"?

E does not help us with the paradox of why this particular disease P seems so much worse in one country than another, even though it contains the least prevalence. Telling me that this country has more of types of deadly diseases does not tell me why disease P seems more deadly in one country than another country.

[Jeffsteinberg91]

Can anyone give me a reason why A is wrong?

[Yevgeniy969]

Can anyone give me a reason why A is wrong?

A says that some strains of the disease are more contagious, not that they're more fatal. So it would not explain why people in country X are more likely to die from it.

[mswang7]

Country X has a lot less cases of P than any other country, however higher mortality in P than any other country.
Prephase: Deadliest strain of P occurs in country x

A. Half of what I stated in the prephase but we need to know that X has the more severe forms
B. Hmm so stats are collected based on country of residency but if the fatalities are not X residents why is the fatality so high in X? Opposite of what we need
C. YES! If the only times P is diagnosed is when P is strong that would case lose case rates but high mortality rates
D. Irrelevant
E. illnesses? We are talking about P specifically