Pollen and other allergens can

Answer choices

1. A

   Out of Scope12% picked this

   Pollen and other allergens do not

   Out of Scope: causes of the cold The last sentence of the paragraph is saying, "When you have a cold, and you have symptoms of a cold, those symptoms are not being caused by histamine." It's only explaining the mechanism of how a cold manifests as symptoms. We know the cold causes those symptoms, but it doesn't do so by triggering more histamine in the blood. It does so by [some other method]. This answer is talking about what causes you to have a cold in the first place (whether or not you're experiencing symptoms). It's a somewhat tempting answer, though, if you're thinking, "pollen -> histamine", so if histamine doesn't have anything to do with cold symptoms, then pollen doesn't have anything to do with colds. But we can't make these strong connections between pollen and histamine. Pollen can cause histamine, but doesn't always have to, according to the first sentence. So it's possible that pollen causes your cold, but in this case pollen doesn't trigger a histamine release, and the cold is producing cold symptoms through some other physical process.

   12%
2. B

   Unknown Comparison0% picked this

   Colds are more difficult to treat

   We have no information that would allow us to rank the relative difficulty of antihistamine treatments (for allergies) with whatever treatments are available for colds.

   0%
3. C

   Too Strong: ineffective25% picked this

   Antihistamines, when taken alone, are ineffective against congestion caused

   This answer is suuuuuper tempting. It would mainly be seeing the more hedged, qualified (thus safer) wording of (E) that would chase me away from this one. This is definitely in the spirit of where we think this conversation is going: since histamine plays no role in cold symptoms, an anti-histamine wouldn't help. But does that have to be true? If histamine plays no role in creating a symptom, antihistamines can't play any role in alleviating that symptom? The THC in cannabis can alleviate headache symptoms, even though dopamine / THC levels played no role in creating the headache. The CBD in cannabis can alleviate joint pain that athletes feel after maximum exertion, even though CBD played no role in creating the joint pain. Check out my online cannabis store at _________ . (jk, just felt like I was plugging it too hard) It's possible that some chemical in antihistamines would have an effect on a cold symptom, even if the cold symptom wasn't caused by histamine. It's also possible that the sheer act of drinking or inhaling any liquid or vapor would be somewhat effective against congestion.

   25%
4. D

   Out of Scope2% picked this

   The sleeplessness that sometimes accompanies allergies can be effectively treated

   Out of Scope: treating sleeplessness Too Strong: effectively This answer is also pretty tempting, since we're told that antihistamines have effects such as drowsiness. Can we say it must be true that anything that has the effect of drowsiness would sometimes be an effective treatment for a certain kind of sleeplessness? Not quite. That's just too strong. We don't know anything about the sleeplessness that accompanies allergies, so we're going out on a limb saying that an antihistamine that makes you drowsy would sometimes effectively treat it.

   2%
5. E

   Correct60% picked this

   Any effect antihistamines may have in reducing cold symptoms does not result from blocking the

   Why this is right

   Since cold symptoms are not caused by histamine in any way, any effect that [whatever] has in reducing cold symptoms would not result from [whatever] was done to histamine. The last sentence is so strong is separating histamine from cold symptoms that you could put any noun in there and it would be a derivable truth: any effect bananas have in reducing cold symptoms would not result from its interaction with histamine.

   Skill tested: Must be True · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.

   60%