P47.S1.Q19 - When can you assume something is bad in contrast to the author

I say go go go

PT 47 Section 1 Question 19

In the stem it talks about a case of polio occurring due to the administration of a vaccine of 12 per year. By doing an alt vaccine, it gets cut into half 6

We need to weaken this

The correct answer is that the alt would cause for some new polio to occur.

MY ISSUE

Some means 1 - infinite; if the some of the new polio is 2, then it's obvious to take the alt. If it is 50, then it sucks

But what should we assume

Admin note: Edited title. Please use the format "PT#.S#.Q# - [brief description]"
https://7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-47-section-1-question-19/

DINOSAUR

(A) points out while IPV wins over OPV in terms of the number of vaccination-caused polio, IPV loses to OPV is terms of the number of naturally occurring polio. The flaw of the stimulus is that the author fails to consider whether OPV also works well in preventing naturally occurring polio. (A) just points out a downside of IPV that OPV doesn't have. We cannot assume one case of vaccination polio is worth the same as one case of natural polio. Maybe natural polio is more virulent.

In addition, (A) also means, if switching to IPV, we will have 7 to a lot more total cases of polio. The probability of having more than 12 cases is higher than that of having 7-12 cases. So the conclusion loses some strength, even though not destroyed.

AkLSAT2020

Couldn't have said it better than Dinosaur. Naturally occurring seems to be implied to be the bad kind. This is just an assumption that i am brining in, but going by the word i would assume naturally occurring means just that. Happening in nature. We don't know the mechanism that can happen, but if it is something that can happen naturally, what if we don't know about it and not knowing about it lead to an outbreak? When you get vaccinated chances are you are more monitored and less chance of outbreak.

Now let's assume you didn't hone into all these details. What if you didn't notice all of these? Well you are in luck. Because you are just trying to weaken the argument. You are not trying to destroy it. If an answer choice destroys the argument obviously it weakens but at the same time probably a lot less subtle and easier to find out. There will be harder questions that the answer choices are not as subtle. You have to realize that answer choice A by just adding numbers it is weakening. We don't know if "some" is greater than 7 or not and the good thing about a lot of weakening questions ( including this one) is that we won't have to know if it is greater than 7 or not. Since I repeat myself, you are just trying to weaken the argument not destroy it.

All this said, we have to be careful about number and percentage weaken questions. A lot of times in those type of questions the relationship between numbers and percentages matter a lot. But that's a topic for another time.

Hope this helps.