Endemic, Epidemic, Pandemic: Semantic

Doctors have this habit of using a different vocabulary, making easy things sound very complicated. An example: ‘melena can be an indication of peptic ulceration’ actually means ‘blood out of your ass can be caused by stomach ulcers’. Why use difficult words: a. the doctor wants to sound very important and smart or b. they just don’t know the subject well enough to explain it in normal words. Or, as it said on one of the tiles on the wall at grandma’s house: ‘It takes an assbleeder to talk about assbleeders’.
Even in this blog we go over so many infections and sometimes I can get lost in the semantics. So, this time no specific infection, it’s just about how you can sound smart whilst taking about them.

Endemic

Endemic refers to a disease or condition that takes place in a specific region. For instance, Malaria is endemic in sub Saharan Africa but is not endemic in Europe. At least, not any more. Some diseases become endemic in new places all the time, the flu for example or the common cold. Other endemic conditions don’t move unfortunately: like the scraping throats and spitting on the floor at 5AM at our neighbor’s place in Thailand. Endemic as such is in short not something to be really scared about, especially when you take precautions (anti-malaria pills, flu-shot, earplugs)

Epidemic/Outbreak

Turning it up a notch. Epidemic means that in a period of time, more cases than expected in a community/area/season are suffering from the same condition or are infected with a specific disease. Scary stuff right. For instance, the epidemic of Ebola in 2014. Or obesity in America. By the way, a different word for epidemic is ‘Outbreak’. Remember that movie with Dustin Hoffman? That sweet little monkey – a real one, not mr. Hoffman – that turned out to be a real badass decease carrier? Outbreak = epidemic. Choose whatever sounds more spectacular.

Pandemic

Now the real trouble is when an Epidemic becomes a Pandemic, in which case the infection has spread worldwide. We’ve seen this, for instance, in the H1N1 time. More notorious examples are the Black Death pandemic (1346-1353: up to 200 Million deaths), the (Spanish) Flu pandemic (1918 – up to 50 Million deaths) and the HIV/AIDS Pandemic (peak 2005-2012 – 36 Million deaths)

Another movie example, watch ‘Contagion’ and you’ll understand what I’m talking about (really nice movie actually with Matt Damon and Jude Law… need I say more?). Storyline summary: ‘As the contagion spreads to millions of people worldwide, societal order begins to break down as people panic.’ Panic! If you do, you know you’re experiencing a Pandemic… Other movie must sees in this genre are Twelve monkeys (not about twelve monkeys) and World War Z.

Epidemiology

All these terms are very important for people that study diseases, epidemiologists. You might need some practice to master that word. I followed a masters in epidemiology and my husband still can’t pronounce it different than “epidedemology”, or something like that. Anyway, an epidemiologist studies how a disease behaves, spreads, etc. It is not that I am wearing a T-Shirt that says “I Love Pandemics”, … but that is only because I didn’t find it yet…

There you have it, some new words to drop in any conversation when you’re ordering beers at a bar and try to impress someone. Choose your words wisely though, nobody wants to know about the Endemics in your pants, the Epidemic fail you had at work or the Pandemic boxes you want to open… 

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