Acclimating to the COVID-19 Lingo: Endemic, Epidemic, Pandemic, and Outbreak
By Faiza Zia Khan
Newport Beach, CA
A few years ago if the terms endemic, epidemic, outbreak, or pandemic were heard; they were either in a health sciences classroom or in a movie. In present times these words are used in everyday conversation and have become a common part of the colloquial language.
As avid consumers of the news and social media, almost every website these days has a section dedicated to the “Coronavirus COVID-19.” This is why we end up interacting with these terms frequently, yet unfortunately very inaccurately. The suffix “-demic” in endemic, epidemic, and pandemic makes them very similar in pronunciation, thus creating confusion and incorrect usage. I took upon myself to explore the phenomena from a linguistic perspective in this article.
First, my mission was to familiarize myself with the accurate COVID-19 lingo to stay informed and educate those who are not fully aware of the meaning behind these terms. Hailing from a completely non-medical background I am as much acquainted with the standard English language dictionary definition of these terms as you all are. Now, I stand corrected as they are very different from the medical field. Not surprisingly, I had read/heard/seen people using these terms interchangeably and erroneously, as understandably so it is very hard to determine which term applies where without knowing the context.
The suffix “-demic” (adjective) is derived from the Greek word dêmos, or “people of a district.” It literally means,“not comparable, rare, of or pertaining to a distinct population of people, dysfunctional, broken.” The prefixes “epi,” “en,” and “pan” then drive the definition further to its actual meaning. The prefix epi- is Greek and means “on, upon, near, at,” while pan-, also a Greek prefix, means “all.” According to the World Health Organization (WHO) the term epidemic is defined as a disease “affecting many persons at the same time, and spreading from person to person in a locality where the disease is not permanently prevalent and occurs at the level of a region or community.” In comparison to an epidemic, a pandemic “is an epidemic that has spread over a large geographical area and is prevalent throughout an entire country, continent, or the whole world.” Pandemic as a word made its way into the English language, through Latin, in the 1600s. Like epidemic, pandemic ultimately derives from the Greek pándēmos, or “common, public” as defined above. Also like epidemic, pandemic was originally used for diseases when it became a part of the English language. Mostly used as a noun in current times, pandemic is also referred to as “a pandemic disease.”
The WHO defines a pandemic as “a worldwide spread of a new disease.” On March 11, history was made as the WHO officially declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic due to the global widespread and severity of the disease. An easy way to distinguish the two according to experts is, “If something is spreading like wildfire, it’s an epidemic. If something has already spread like wildfire and is currently massive in its reach and impact, it’s a pandemic.”
Next on the list is the term “endemic.” Linguistically, the dictionary definition of endemic is, “... (of a disease or condition) regularly found among particular people or in a certain area.” Endemic means an ongoing transmission or spread of an illness within a certain population or region. Experts at Mayo Clinic infectious disease center provide an example of endemic as the dengue fever. There are parts of the world where the dengue fever is endemic, meaning that there are mosquitoes that are carrying dengue fever and transmitting it from person to person.
Just as I thought I had started figuring out the COVID-19 labyrinth, adding chaos to confusion was the news media. There are countless transposable references to COVID-19 all over the internet, carelessly substituting not only epidemic with pandemic and vice versa, but also as an “outbreak.” In simple English language we do not even think twice about the word outbreak due to the abundant usage. The Oxford Dictionary defines an outbreak (noun) as “the sudden or violent start of something unwelcome, such as war, disease, etc.” In the health sciences arena when referring to an infectious disease “an outbreak is specifically a sudden rise in cases, especially when it is only or so far affecting a relatively localized area. That makes a disease outbreak roughly synonymous with an epidemic.”
For social media usage such as blogs, vlogs, podcasts, videos, and forums this may more generally refer to the major spread of an infectious disease as an outbreak. In official, medical, and scientific communication, however, it’s important not to confuse a local epidemic (such as a disease affecting just a city) with a pandemic as it implies the outbreak spread all over the world. This term carries the same definition as epidemic, but it is often used for a more limited geographic area. According to the subject matter experts at the Center for Disease Control (CDC), "Initially outbreaks like this usually are detected by detection of a cluster, so a group of cases of similar illness or disease. If it's not contained at that point, then it could develop into an outbreak, so an increase in cases in a certain local area. Spread beyond that could then become epidemic, or within a country or a local region, and then if there's spread, more widespread, so across multiple countries, continents or around the world, then that becomes a pandemic."
I started digging into some other peripheral terms that are also used with the above like epicenter, viral shedding, incubation period and the list went on and on. Hence, my dear readers, is your head spinning yet? Well to be honest mine certainly is so after a long vernacular battle with the COVID-19 lingo, I retreated back to my favorite stay-at-home spot aka the kitchen.
(Faiza Zia Khan holds a Master’s in Journalism degree from the University of British Columbia, Canada. She has collaborated with news media outlets including Global National and actively volunteers for several community investment projects for the Red Cross, United Way and the Breast Cancer Foundation)
