Emily B. answered • 05/31/20
Yale Grad with 8 years tutoring experience
Let's start with epidemic, a term that many people have heard before. An epidemic is defined as more cases of a given disease in a certain population of a specific period of time than would be expected. Often we think of epidemics as coming from infectious diseases, like an epidemic norovirus (a type of gastrointestinal illness) on a cruise ship. However, non-infectious diseases, like obesity, can also reach epidemic levels, as it has in much of the United States.
A pandemic is like an epidemic, but is widespread over a large area, generally affecting multiple countries. The COVID-19 pandemic is one example. Can you think of another example of a pandemic?
The term endemic applies to a disease that is prevalent in a certain area, regardless of whether or not the number of cases in that area are more than what would be expected. We could say that malaria is endemic in some countries, such as Uganda and DRC, because it occurs there every year.
