INIVIDUAL WORK

DEFINITION PROJECT - SLO 4 (ORGANIZATION AND FOCUS)

CONTAGIOUS 1

CONTAGIOUS DISEASE

Caroline Trinh

Department of English, California State University, Fullerton

ENGL 360: Technical Writing

Dr. Leslie Bruce

September 28, 2020

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A Brief Introduction to Contagious

Contagious diseases are illnesses that are spread by exposure to an infected individual by

coming in contact with contaminated surfaces and objects, as well as through other modes, such

as contaminated air, food, and water. Contagious develops from the Latin phrase contagio

meaning “contact” with uncleanliness to physical and moral objects (Wolfe, Dunavan,

Diamond, 1970). People that are sick can spread their disease when they touch objects and

surfaces, or when they get in close proximity to people, when their body fluids is exchanged,

and through contaminated foods and water. It is important to be cautious of these transferable

disease as it can spread rapidly, so taking precautions will ensure your health and others around

you.

TRANSMISSION: HOW DISEASE IS SPREAD

Infectious diseases are caused by germs, such as viruses and bacteria, that can get into the body

and cause health problems. A portion of infectious diseases can spread directly from person to

person, thus said to be contagious. Contagious diseases can spread from one individual to

another in several ways. Germs can spread through physical contact, in which a person that is

infected touches another, like shaking hands or kissing. The public’s health should be aware of

contagious disease as they can be spread through everyday tasks and people do not realize it.

• DIRECT CONTACT. Person to person contact is commonly how diseases spread.

According to Higuera (2017) from Healthline, transmission happens when an

“infected person touches or exchanges bodily fluids with another person.” Many and

most sexually transmitted diseases for example, Herpes, Hepatitis B, and Human

papillomavirus are spread through direct contact.

• DROPLETS. When a person coughs or sneezes, some infectious germs can remain in

the air in droplets. These droplets can also be created when an individual is speaking
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and can infect another person when he/she spray it into the air. Though droplets can

only be spread in close proximity as they descend to the floor when released from the

body. For example, the common cold can be spread through droplet transmission

when a person coughs or sneezes into the air and then another person breathes in that

air, typically remaining for hours.

• AIRBORNE. Droplets and airborne transmission differ as the agents travel longer

distances and carry on in the air for extended periods of time (Antonovics, Wilson,

Forbes, Hauffe, Kallio, Leggett, Webster, 2017). Airborne diseases can be caught by

anyone that enters that same room after someone with the infectious disease exited.

Chickenpox is an example of a highly contagious disease that spreads easily from

direct exposure of an infected person to another non-infected person.

• FOODBORNE and WATERBORNE. Infectious disease can be spread via food and

water that are contaminated. These illnesses are caused by consuming hazardous

foods or beverages containing three categories: physical, chemical, and biological

agents. Many of these food and waterborne disease are commonly referred to as

“food poisoning” and often have to do with Salmonella and Escherichia coli (E.

coli). Salmonella is found in many foods including eggs, beef, chicken, some

vegetables. Furthermore, E. coli is primarily transmitted through raw or undercooked

meat products (Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 2012). Additionally, the

fatal disease, Cholera, spreads through contaminated waters and each year infects

"1.3 to 4 million people around the world, killing 21,000 to 143,000 people,"

according to the World Health Organization (WHO, 2019).

• ANIMAL to PERSON. Some illnesses can potentially be spread from animal to

person when an infected animal bites or scratches them (Center for Disease Control

and Prevention, 2012). Rabies is an example of a fatal disease and contagious when

an infected animal bites a human or another animal.

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• INSECT BITE (VECTORBORNE). These infectious agents are known as zoonotic

diseases that are spread by insects. These include those that especially suck blood,

such as ticks, fleas, and mosquitos. They can spread a number on contagious

diseases like Lyme disease and Malaria.

Figure 1. Diagram of “Types of Disease Transmission.” Source: Principles of Epidemiology. (2019). Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/csels/dsepd/ss1978/lesson1/section10.html.

HOW TO PREVENT CONTAGIOUS DISEASES

There are a few precautions that can prevent the spread of infectious diseases. The probability

of coming in contact with infectious germs is something as simple as touching a doorknob,

turning on and off a light switch, and shaking another person’s hand can increase the spread.

Although those are all possibilities, there are many preventative measures that someone can

take to help decrease the spread.

• WASH HANDS. Washing your hands “frequently and thoroughly with soap and warm

water for at least 20 seconds” could help prevent catching the common cold (Gretz, Huff,

2019).

• COVER MOUTH. A common courtesy is to cover your mouth when sneezing or

coughing to prevent droplets in the air and later, washing your hands afterwards.
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• MINIMIZE TOUCHING. The less an individual touches their mucous membranes (the

eyes, nose, and mouth) where germs can stick onto easily and enter your system it can

halt the person from getting infected after touching people or objects.

• SAFELY PREPARE FOOD. For

foodborne and waterborne illnesses,

it is good to avoid cross

contamination of raw meets and

produce as organisms can thrive in

improperly prepared foods (Higuera,

2017). Improperly prepared foods

include not thoroughly washing

meats and vegetables that can cause

Figure 2. Image “Food Safety.” Source: Food
Safety. (2019). Centers for Disease Control and
disease like Salmonella and E. coli.
Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/csels/dsepd/
ss1978/lesson1/section10.html.

• VACCINATIONS. A major option to prevent contagious disease from spreading is

getting vaccinated. Staying up to date on our vaccinations help yourself and the public,

especially those that are immunocompromised and cannot get vaccines, from spreading a

disease further. When a person becomes immune to a disease, they can slow down the

spread of transmission to other people. There can be such a disease that longer persist to

the population if “the number of people in a population that are immune against a

disease” is higher than that of those that do have the disease, this is called herd immunity

(Vanderslott, Dadonaite, Roser, 2019). Herd immunity can help those that cannot receive

a vaccine due to their compromised immune system. Vaccines are shown to “drastically
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reduce the risk of becoming ill with these infectious diseases” (Center for Disease

Control and Prevention, 2012). The idea of vaccines is to avoid a specific disease such as

Rabies, Chicken pox, and sexually transmitted diseases, like Herpes and Human

papillomavirus, thus preventing the spread of diseases. There are so many resources, like

World Health Organization (WHO), that show data on how vaccinations are proven to

help with disease control and prevention.

Figure 3. Graph “Global Number of Deaths per Year.” Source: Global Number of Deaths per Year. (2018).
Our World in Data. World Health Organization. https://ourworldindata.org/vaccination#global-decline-in-
vaccine-preventable-diseases.

An Understanding to Contagious
There are many examples of contagious diseases that transfer through contaminated surfaces,

person to person through air or bodily fluids, through food and water, even by animal or insect

bites. The transmission process is easily achieved in our everyday lives, thus taking preventative

measures can decrease the transference of illnesses. The core functions of public health are

bringing awareness to these contagious diseases to the public that allows the minimization of

transferable illnesses. Contagious is important to understand because the knowledge can help

protect yourself and the rest of the population as it prevents the spread of infectious diseases.
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References

Antonovics, J., Wilson, A., Forbes, M., Hauffe, H., Kallio, E., Leggett, H., Webster, J. (2017,

May 5). The evolution of transmission mode. National Center for Biotechnology

Information. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5352810/.

Gretz, M., Huff, M. (2019, September 5). Did you wash your hands? Evaluating memory for

objects touched by healthy individuals and individuals with contagious and

noncontagious diseases. Wiley Online Library. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/

full/10.1002/acp.3604.

Wolfe, N., Dunavan, C., Diamond, J. (1970, January 01). Origins of major human infectious

diseases. National Center for Biotechnology Information. https://

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK114494/.

Higuera, V. (2017, July 26). How are diseases transmitted? Healthline.

https://www.healthline.com/health/disease-transmission#indirect-contact.

Principles of Epidemiology. (2012, May 18). Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

https://www.cdc.gov/csels/dsepd/ss1978/lesson1/section10.html.

Vanderslott, S., Dadonaite, B., Roser, M. (December 2019). Vaccination. Our World in Data.

from https://ourworldindata.org/vaccination#global-decline-in-vaccine-

preventable-diseases.

Cholera (2019). World Health Organization. https://www.who.int/en/news-room/fact-sheets

detail/cholera.
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Postwrite

From Markel’s strategies, in the first paragraph, I briefly mentioned the etymology of where

contagious originally stemmed from. Next, I used partitioning in the second and third paragraph

and splitting off under, to divide this idea into smaller parts so that readers can understand it

better is another form that I will be using. It would help the reader understand my definition as I

use everyday examples that could relate to their lives. Giving examples of a scenario is a great

way for readers to apply it to their personal lives, therefore understanding on deeper levels of my

scientific keyword. Under the prevention paragraph, explains way in touching simple surfaces,

such as our phones, have thousands upon millions of germs on them and touching our bodies can

cause a spread of disease. Additionally, examples of fairly known diseases for each category of

transmissions paragraph, could further help guide the readers to learn about my keyword. I also

included visualize concepts for the readers to better absorb the information. Graphics can be

graphs and images that further help explain and illustrate to the reader what the author is going to

portray as shown in the vaccination section of the definition. The image I used to display how

diseases can be spread is a quick visual for readers to glance at and really understand each

category that was explained.