CHEERS!

VIRUS LAB
Scenario

Ren’s class is eating lunch in the courtyard. 30 minutes into lunch, his friend Sam dares him to eat an
entire family-sized bag of flaming-hot Cheetos. Ren is dying for some water, so his friend Pooja lends him
her water bottle. He gulps down the entire bottle and hands it back to her. And so it begins.

Pooja continues to share her drink throughout the day with her classmates. Some are just thirsty, some
can’t get the vending machines to work properly, and some keep listening to Sam as he dares them to eat
flaming-hot Cheetos. Any way about it, Pooja’s drink is passed around. And so it continues.

Background

A virus is not considered a living organism as it only contains DNA surrounded by a protein coat.
However, viruses are serious infectious agents causes conditions such as AIDS, chicken pox, and herpes.
Viruses must have a live host cell to reproduce. The virus takes over the protein building machinery of
the cell to create new viruses to spread the infection. Viruses can infect many different types of
organisms, both prokaryotic and eukaryotic, but each virus also has host specificity, which means they
can only affect one or very few specific hosts.

One way a virus can be spread through a population is by sharing bodily fluids such as saliva, blood, or
semen. We will demonstrate how quickly a virus can spread through today’s simulation activity. This is the
study of epidemiology.

Goal: Predict the spread of a viral disease and identify Patient 0.

Pre-lab Questions
1. What is a virus?
2. What are the parts of a virus and what role does each one play?
3. How are viruses spread?
4. Give 3 examples of viruses that can be spread through the scenario for the lab.
5. What is ‘patient 0’? How is it determined?

Materials
 Exchange Card
 Cup of ‘Bodily Fluid’
 Disposable Pipette

Part A: Caring is Sharing

Safety: For the purpose of the lab, you MUST be wearing goggles at all times and at NO POINT should
you touch your eyes. Seriously. Let’s try NOT to test out the eye-wash station.

Procedure

1. When given permission, pick up a cup of ‘bodily fluid’, an exchange card, and a pipette.
2. ‘Exchange’ bodily fluids with a peer by dropping 8 drops of your fluid into their cup and they do the
same to yours. Document the exchange on your Exchange Card.
3. Use your pipette to stir your cup of bodily fluid after the exchange.
4. Repeat Step 2-3 two more times (so total of 3 exchanges). These should be 3 different individuals.
5. Return to your seat and await teacher instructions.

Results

1. Paste your Exchange Card into your Lab Notebook.

2. In a table, document how many of your classmates are infected and how many are not. You may
also want to record everyone’s exchanges in a table similar to the Table 1 (next page).
 3. As a class, determine who was patient 0. Give your reasoning.

Part A Questions

1. This scenario is based on exchanging fluids through sharing a drink. Describe 2 more scenarios in
which viruses could be spread in a school setting.
- The viruses could have been spread if somebody had sneezed and the virus was spread
throughout the class and the air circulation system picked up the viruses and spread them
throughout the schools air conditioning system
- Another way that the viruses could have been spread in a school setting is if the person(s) with
the virus had passed out papers and the virus was spread on the paper meaning that everyone
who had the papers with the virus has a chance of picking it up.
2. Describe 5 ways to prevent the spread of viruses. Then, rank them in order of most preventative to
least.

- Washing your hands

- Making sure you don’t touch other people’s stuff while still in the lab process
- Don’t throw away cups in the recycling and only the big blue one in the back
- Make sure that you do not drops of drops on the table in which it doesn’t get wiped away or
spread
- Make sure that you do not exchange certain utensils such as pencila and pens when writing the
lab as someone could have the virus on their hands and you could contract it.
3. What was Ms. Sappington’s special surprise? Describe it.

The special was the second virus which was contracted by touch as one of the cups had the virus spread
on it and only one person had got it

Part B: Vaccinations in Epidemiology

Procedure

1. Go to the following website and scroll to the simulator. https://fred.publichealth.pitt.edu/measles

2. Choose Roswell, Georgia. Run the simulator, pausing to fill in the table below.

Table 2. Spread of Measles in Roswell, Georgia

%
Day 32 Day 238
Population Day 73 Day 114 Day 156 Day 197
(initial) (final)
Vaccinated
80% 1 9 98 162 214 66
95% 2 0 0 0 00

3. Make a graph showing the data from Table 2.

Part B Questions
 1. Predict what would occur if 50% of the population were vaccinated. Draw this on your graph with
the other two.
2. Give 2 pros and 2 cons of vaccines. What is your overall view?
3. Research! What are the types of vaccines? How are they made? You MUST include SCIENTIFIC
sources here.

Part C: Evil Genius Simulator

Procedure

1. Go to the following website and mess around

https://www.learner.org/courses/envsci/interactives/disease/disease.html
2. Choose one of the following goals. Document your choice in your lab notebook.
a. Kill the entire population with the Red Death in under 20 days.
b. Keep the death toll of Impfluenza below 1.5% over 100 days.
c. Cause more than 80% of the population to be immune to Neasles, without a single death.
3. Make a plan of how you will go about achieving your goal.
4. Try it. How did it turn out?[
5. Continue trying different techniques and documenting what you did/why you did it/what the results
are. Keep going until you achieve your goal or fail as an evil genius. You MUST try at least 5
different ways before stopping.

Part C Questions

1. Did you succeed or fail as an evil genius? Explain.

2. On a scale of 1-10 with 1 being MOST, how frustrated did this simulation make you? Explain.
3. What did you learn from this simulator?