Get Vaccinated
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/year-s-flu-season-may-be-bad-one-here-s-n1054856
This article, in summary, discusses the potential severity of this season’s flu as well as the results of last year’s flu vaccine. They begin with a segment discussing the first flu death and a reference to the flu season of Australia, which they state “can be an indication of what’s to come in the Northern Hemisphere”. Then, they continue to inform the readers of the preventative measures, especially vaccines. Afterwards, the article references previous flu seasons and the reasons behind why a vaccine is necessary despite its lack of efficiency. Throughout the article they discuss the relationship between vaccine efficiency, flu season patterns, and demographic immune system trends.
Several characteristics of the flu that have to be considered are its infectivity, pathogenicity and virulence. These three characteristics can be considered as weights in a network where the network represents those who have been exposed to the flu. These susceptible hosts are the nodes, people. The weights measure the severity, the capacity to cause infection and disease which allows some conclusion of the node’s health state. The edges are created by any sort of transmission whether it is direct contact or indirect contact. From this we can conclude that this article describes this network and how vaccines can prevent the weights of each of the edges within this network. The article goes deeper into the spread of the flu vaccine as she connects the Australian flu season with the American flu season.