CONTAGION: The Hollywood Version

Yesterday in class we finally got to discuss one of the topics I was most looking forward to: the Human Immune Virus (HIV). I was really interested in this topic because it is such a prevalent disease in our society yet I did not know much about it. During lecture, we learned about the transmission of HIV, why it stays in the body forever, and the process of identifying Patient Zero. Patient Zero is the first person who contracts the disease and begins the spread of it. This person is important to find since learning more about them can lead to more understanding of the disease transmission. 

To go along with this lecture we also did a disease transmission simulation in lab. For the simulation, we were once again joined by the Biotech class making our class of 20 a class of 40. We did this in order to have a bigger sample size for our experiment. To do the simulation, we all had gloves covered with a solution that was possibly an infection. We shook hands with different people and later found out who came in contact with the infected. From those who were infected, we were able to trace down the infection to two different people. Turns out, we could not differentiate between the patient zero and the second case since for all we knew either person could have given it to the other.

Later in the class, we also got to attempt making our own Influenza vaccine. We did this by looking at data from the previous year and making educated guesses on what strains would be most prevalent this year. Apparently, this is also how scientists make flu vaccines. They have to start the manufacturing of the vaccines early on in the year so they have to make guesses as to what vaccine will work as best prevention. Sadly, my group’s flu vaccine did not work very well. We were meant to tailor it to a community who were skeptic about vaccines so we did not add a couple of ingredients so they would have less to be afraid of. Although we thought this would help this community, what we left out led to the vaccine becoming less effective.

After class, Shreejal, Maxime, and I met up with John to attend an architecture boat tour. I was not expecting much from the boat tour but it was actually really interesting to learn where Chicago’s great architecture stems from. The views were also incredible but I will let the picture do the talking for that.

After the tour and dinner with the cohort, we got back to campus where I continued to work on my final project.

When class ended yesterday, little did I know that that would be our last traditional lecture and lab day. Today, I realized, was dedicated to working on our projects and tomorrow we will spend the day presenting them. 

Linnea and Anna lay out our information

Before the beginning of class, my group and I had finished the writing part of our assignment. This meant we spent the first half of class simply cutting and pasting our information on to our poster board. It felt great to get to relax a little on one of our last days. 

Dr. Fineschi and Dawn introducing the movie

We finished our board shortly after coming back from lunch and so we headed back to the lecture room for the next part of class. In the lecture room, Dr. Fineschi and Dawn had set up snacks and a movie for us to watch. The movie’s name was “Contagion” just like our course. The movie followed the story of the spread of an extremely contagious and deadly disease which caused a global pandemic. Dr. Fineschi had chosen this movie for her Contagion courses to watch because it covers a lot about what we learned in class. It was cool to watch the movie and see some of the labs we did in class actually used to create a treatment for the disease. I was also able to understand most of the science behind how the disease was transmitted to humans and how it spread globally, which felt really good. Although it may seem silly to hear that a movie was part of my reflection process, it really was. I realized just how much stuff I can pick up on now that I would have been so confused about just a couple of weeks ago. 

After the movie and a brief class discussion, we were allowed to leave if we had already finished our poster. Thankfully we had finished so Linnea, Anna, and I got to leave a little earlier than the others. 

Our finished project

The rest of my day was spent with Maria, Adela, and Cecilia since we will soon be parting ways. We decided to go down to the lake since we have really been wanting to go. We didn’t spend much time at the lake since the water was really cold and we wanted to make it back in time for dinner. 

Once we made it back to the dorms, we all headed to our rooms to work on our projects. Although my group and I had finished our poster we still had to go over what our presentation was going to be like tomorrow. I am really excited about our presentation and I hope it will go well. Either way, I will report more on that tomorrow.