Jack2

White Blood cells are much broader than leukocytes. The term White Blood Cell is just a type of blood cell. The term Leukocyte ties more into the immune system. If you hear the term "white blood cell" you would think about blood and red blood cells. If you hear the term "Leukocyte" you would think about the immune system and pathogens etc.
 * 1. Describe the difference between leukocyte and white blood cells. **

Proteins are just strands of amino acids. Antibodies which have a Y shape can be called proteins.
 * 2. The term proteins are frequently used in the study of immunology. Explain the term/concept proteins. **

The black death was very deadly because in that time there were no modern medicines to fight againsed it. The black death was EXTREMELY deadly because it weakened and sometimes disabled the immune system. It did this by injecting Leukocytes with a substance which then deactivated them. The immune system had never experienced anything like this before so it had NO idea of what to do. The virus spread through fleas. The fleas would get bite the victim which then gave them the virus. Rats were often bitten by the fleas and could carry the disease from one place to another. Also, during that time, doctors were not very experienced and did not know how to deal with such a deadly virus. The people of that time did not know what the virus was coming from so they did not realize that by being near animals fleas could easily bite them.
 * 3. Explain why the Black Death virus, which has caused millions of deaths, was deadly using concepts of immunology. **

__a) what does it mean - 20% fatality rate? __ A 20% fatality rate means that out of a certain amount of people affected with the disease, it is expected that 20% (or 1 out of 5) of them will die. Or you could say that if you are infected with H7N9 there is a 4 out of 5 chance that you will survive.
 * 4. The recent bird flu virus, H7N9, has a 20% fatality rate if one is infected. **

__b) How is this virus different from a common flu virus? __ H7N9 is different to other flu virus's because it is a new strain. It has never been experienced before. This is why allot of people are in a lot of trouble because doctors haven't really found a cure. Currently all live poultry has been killed in shanghai and shanghai governments have ordered the killing of birds after they found the virus in many pigeons from the area.

__c) Are there ways to prepare our body immune system against such fatal, deadly virus? __ If you get a vaccine your body will learn how to fight off virus's which means that if you do get infected your body may be able to fight off the virus. Vaccination is when a doctor injects you with a deactivated virus. Your immune system reacts as if it is a real virus and fights it. This gives the immune system memory of the virus so if it is encountered again, the immune system will know how to stop it. Thus preparing the immune system for such a deadly virus.

__d) The bird flu virus wasn't infectious to humans before; explain why it could become viral and harmful to humans. __ Maybe because the medications have been used so many times on humans and birds that the H7N9 virus has adapted and became immune to such medications. When I said that medication is used on birds i am talking about how almost ALL farm animals are fed a regular diet of antibiotics. The bacteria has adapted to antibiotics which means that these birds can be infected MUCH more easily.

__e) Right now, the flu is unable to infect a person through human to human transmission; if it can infect through human to human transmissions, what could have changed in the virus?__

Human to Human transmition means a disease is spread from one human to another through sneezes, coughs, sharing food, ETC. Currently H7N9 cannot be spread like this but if it could the virus would infect A LOT more people and the fatality rate could rise. The disease would not only be in China and Taiwan, it would probably spread all over the world.