Talk:Epidemic

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[edit] Definition

Somebody needs to add what % of a population must be affected to constitute an epedemic... 11:15, 8 Mar 2004 207.4.4.194 (?)

Not true. "An epidemic is the occurrence in a community or region of cases of an illness, specific health-related behaviour, or other health-related events clearly in excess of normal expectancy (Last, 1995). The definition is context sensitive. What is "clearly in excess" in one place and time period, may not be so in another context. An annual incidence of 2 million episodes of malaria may be 'expected' for India but if this were to occur in England, it would certainly be an outbreak! Even one case of small pox today anywhere in the world (except due to accidental exposure in the labs which still store the virus) will be considered an outbreak because none is expected. The common misconceptions about outbreaks are that it havens only with infectious diseases, epidemics have to be dramatic and sudden, and epidemics have to involve many people. None of these are necessarily true." EPIDEMIOLOGY Epidemic investigation http://www.sunmed.org/Epidemicinvestigation.html References & further reading 1. Last JM (Ed. ). A Dictionary of Epidemiology, 3rd Edition. Oxford University Press, 1995. Petersam 04:29, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

What is the difference between epidemic and pandemic, be specific.


 -- An Epidemic doesn't have to pretain only to "Health-related behaviours". It could be anything that could be considered an "outbreak" e.i. Beanie-babys (they had an explosive popularity); (game) World of Warcraft (its popularity grew quickly); even to certain styles of clothing that many people started to wear in one given time

[edit] epidemic threshold?

Somewhat related to the above discussion, I came across the term epidemic threshold, is there a standard method for computing this threshold? thanks. --Vsion 03:07, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit]  ?

Please somebody add what causes epidemics to spread. -Thanks

[edit] non-biological is not accurate - should be "other" biological uses.

When you mention "non-biological" uses, I think you mean "non-infectious-disease". Surely everyone agrees that obesity, drug addiction, and mental illness are biological! I would suggest changing this to read "other" uses.

Perhaps a true non-biological "epidemic" would be something like a video game or clothing fashion? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.86.8.103 (talk) 12:46, 12 October 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Death of people?!?

What does the line "Epidemics lead to death of people" in the non-biological section mean? It's completely inappropriate and out of the blue! Well, that's my opinion anyway. --24.46.164.83 05:25, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Add some more links

I introduced more text. Please make internal links at important words on the text. KVDP (talk) 18:45, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Merge?

There is a call to merge Pandemic#Pandemics and notable epidemics through history (which is a full description) into Epidemic#Notable epidemics through history (which is a stub-and-pointer).