PrepTest 138, Section 4, Question 5
Recent epidemiological studies report that Country X has(37 more words not shown)
Which one of the following,(11 more words not shown)
- AThere are several(12 more words not shown)
- BMost of the(18 more words not shown)
- CIn Country X,(15 more words not shown)
- DThe number of(15 more words not shown)
- EBecause of its(14 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Why is this disease more deadly among the reported patients in a country where it is so uncommon?
One possibility is that the health system isn't set up to treat it. If doctors rarely encounter disease P, perhaps hospitals have little experience or few resources for dealing with it. Or perhaps treatment is poor more generally. Those are possible explanations to look for, not facts we can assume.
What we’re looking for
Having little of one particular disease doesn't establish that a country is healthy overall. For this discrepancy question, keep the two specific reports together: a low incidence of disease P and a high chance of death among residents reported to have it. An explanation needs to make those facts fit together.
Working the answers
- A
Contagiousness concerns how readily a disease spreads. It doesn't tell us how likely an infected person is to die. We also aren't told which forms occur in Country X. To use A, we'd have to supply both a connection to this country and a connection to the reported patients' higher risk of death.
- B
The discrepancy concerns residents of Country X. Fatal cases involving visitors don't explain why residents reported to have the disease are more likely to die than residents elsewhere. B changes which patients we are talking about without resolving the comparison in the passage.
- CCorrect
This takes a different route from the treatment prediction: the country mostly recognizes severe cases. Mild cases can go uncounted, making the reported incidence look low. Meanwhile, the group recorded as having the disease is made up largely of the patients in greatest danger.
Imagine comparing a group that includes mild and severe cases with a group that includes almost only severe cases. We'd expect death to be more common in the second group. Country X's diagnosis practices therefore help explain both the low reported incidence and the high death rate among its reported patients. We don't have to assume that every case there is severe.
- D
A changing number of cases from year to year doesn't explain a higher chance of death among those reported cases. The answer gives us no reason that a low-incidence year would select patients more likely to die, or that this would distinguish Country X from the others.
- E
More potentially fatal illnesses overall doesn't establish why disease P has this pattern. Other illnesses might create problems for Country X's residents, but the passage is comparing the reported frequency and fatality of one particular disease. E doesn't connect those two facts.
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