To help shed some light on some terms, let’s consider Epidemic vs. Pandemic. What is the difference? Which is worse?
Let’s start with some definitions:
Epidemic (adj): rapid spread of infectious disease to a large number of people in a given population within a short period of time.
Pandemic (adj): an epidemic prevalent over a whole country or the world.
Basically, an epidemic affects a smaller area, either a certain area of a country or maybe one country, but doesn’t necessarily spread to other countries. The 2019-2020 influenza (flu) was classified as an epidemic in the United States. There were an estimated 38M cases and over 22,000 deaths.
The last pandemic was SARS in 2003, however, there is another pandemic we have been in the middle of since 1981 – HIV/AIDS.
We’re going to add a third term – twindemic. As of now, this term is made-up, but just like “vax” made it into the dictionary. It is a term to describe when an epidemic and a pandemic are happening at the same time. This year the rate of flu infection is higher than last year and if it hits pandemic levels then we could have a twindemic.
Here at KODOCARE we have a combo test that tests for both flu and COVID and some people testing positive for both. Several hospitals have seen cases of people with COVID and flu at the at some time as well. It’s been called – “Flurona.” The new terms keep coming!
Since pandemics cover large geographic regions – multiple countries – they last for multiple years. It has now been over 2 years since COVID-19 was first identified. We now know better how to prevent, treat, and live with it. The way out of this pandemic will be to follow all that we know.