Aug
21
Epidemics and Pandemics
If you care to recall, there was once a day, before Avian Flu pandemic scares and Swine Flu pandemic scares, that people used the word epidemic, and pandemics were unheard of. While the definition basically boils down to that a pandemic is an epidemic in more places, the way I recall hearing it explained was, during the avian flu scare, they had some “expert” on to explain that a pandemic was an epidemic of epic proportions. And sure enough, it captured the public imagination and superseded epidemic in the public lexicon. And here’s the Google Trends data to prove it, from 2004 and the last 12 months.
