ShmoopTube

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We speak student!

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[ musical flourish ]

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And here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by mosquitos. [image of a mosquito giving a book to a man]

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Now we can't say they've never done anything for us.

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All right, check out the following passage.

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[ mumbles ]

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All right, well that makes us wish that just once we could have [three puppies barking, one at a time]

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a question about puppies.

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Anyway, our question for this passage is:

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Which of the following was responsible for the largest number

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of fatalities that occurred during the construction of the canal?

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And let's look at the potential answers.

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Yeesh.

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[ mumbles ]

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Okay, we can go ahead and eliminate answer B because [soldiers in a field firing]

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nothing in the passage mentions war injuries.

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Likewise, the paragraph doesn't mention Panamanian rebels,

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so we can eliminate answer D right away, too.

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That just leaves A and C as our potential options.

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Well, we can easily assume that job site safety [a hoisting vehicle dropping a storage container on a man]

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wasn't a priority in the early 1900s.

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We need to eliminate answer C.

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It's plausible, but because it isn't mentioned in the paragraph,

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- like we don't see it anywhere in here - it's not our answer. [man giving a rose to a woman]

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Which leaves answer A as our one and only.

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The passage tells us right here

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that of the 27,500 people who died,

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most died due to infectious diseases like malaria and yellow fever. [a puppy and a dog playing]

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So there we have it, our answer.

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Ah, much better.

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[ crashing ]

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