Written Answer Question: It is the year 2041 and you are a doctor at the Mayo Clinic in Arizona. In less than one week, you have 10 new patients who all have the same symptoms: Headache, body aches, fever and nausea. Tests show it is caused by an unnamed airborne virus. When you look at their addresses you find they do not live near each other, but they all go to the same gym on Main Street, and on the same evenings. While you treat the symptoms, you are worried about more cases. In a paragraph, explain how you might gather more evidence, as well as what precautions you might suggest to members of the community to ensure others do not become infected. Be sure to explain what you think the evidence is important and why the precautions might help reduce the possibility of spreading the virus. *

To gather evidence about this problem, it would be important for me to contact other doctors and other hospitals in the area to find out if they are also seeing many patients with these symptoms and infected with the same virus. It would be important to inform these hospitals that the proliferation of this virus needs to be monitored, so that we can know if we are facing an epidemic. It is also important to inform the entire community about precautions that must be taken to prevent the spread of the virus. The main precaution is to avoid bringing your hands to your eyes, mouth and nose, as it prevents the virus from coming into contact with the body's entrances. In addition, hand cleaning should be done frequently and people who have these symptoms should avoid leaving the house and coming into contact with other people.