{"id":5924,"date":"2021-12-15T22:41:25","date_gmt":"2021-12-15T22:41:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/enorcerna.com\/wiki\/science\/the-3-differences-between-pandemic-and-endemic-explained\/"},"modified":"2021-12-15T22:41:25","modified_gmt":"2021-12-15T22:41:25","slug":"the-3-differences-between-pandemic-and-endemic-explained","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/enorcerna.com\/wiki\/science\/the-3-differences-between-pandemic-and-endemic-explained\/","title":{"rendered":"The 3 differences between Pandemic and Endemic (explained)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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As of December 2021, the month in which this article is being written, the term \"pandemic\" has become extremely familiar to all of us<\/strong>. We have gone from believing that pandemics were a thing of the past, belonging to ancient times where there were no health systems like the current ones, to realizing, the hard way, that we continue and will continue to be at the mercy of the microscopic threats that threaten the world.<\/p>\n

And it is that unfortunately, the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the disease caused by it COVID-19 have had to arrive for us to learn that these epidemiological events are neither something of the past nor do they affect only developing countries. And for almost two years, we have all been submerged in a tremendous avalanche of information about pandemics.<\/p>\n

Of information and, of course, of fear. And as always, fear is linked to a very important factor of ignorance and misunderstanding about the concepts that we have heard and read. And in this sense, one of the most common doubts we have, as a society, is the difference between a pandemic and an endemic.<\/p>\n

They are not, despite being relatively related, synonyms. A pandemic is an epidemiological event in which an infectious disease has spread rapidly over a very large area, affecting several continents or the entire world; an endemic, an epidemiological event in which an infectious disease remains stationary in a specific population. But as this simple differentiation hides many more nuances, in today's article and, as always, from the hand of the most prestigious scientific publications, we are going to dissect the main differences between a pandemic and an endemic in the form of key points<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

What is a pandemic? And an endemic?<\/h2>\n

Before going in depth and analyzing the key differences between the two epidemiological concepts, it is interesting (and also important) that we put ourselves in context and understand, individually, what each of these terms consists of. So let's see what exactly is a pandemic and what is an endemic.<\/p>\n

Pandemic: what is it?<\/h3>\n

A pandemic is an epidemic, an infectious disease that affects a large number of people in the same place during the same period of time, that has a very large geographical area and that is expanding rapidly<\/strong>. Thus, when a contagious disease crosses country borders, reaches several continents and even spreads throughout the world, we speak of a pandemic.<\/p>\n

It is very important to emphasize that the disease has to be infectious. Because diseases such as cancer, despite being widespread throughout the world and affecting many people, as they are not contagious, can never constitute a pandemic.<\/p>\n

In this sense, we can understand a pandemic as the epidemiological situation of international affectation in which an infectious disease spreads on a global scale, attacking a large number of individuals in the same period of time and in physically isolated places. And for this, the pathogen in question must meet certain characteristics.<\/p>\n

Pandemics are relatively rare as many factors have to be combined<\/strong>: that the disease is viral (nowadays, we could treat a bacterial infection with antibiotics before a pandemic appeared, as was the case with the Black Death in the fourteenth century), that the virus is new (or that it is at least a strain sufficiently different so that there is no herd immunity, that is, no one has antibodies against it), that a person-to-person contagion follows, that is transmitted through the air (the most efficient route of transmission for the virus and its spread ) and that many infections are asymptomatic (the person does not know they are sick, does not stay at home, and spreads the virus).<\/p>\n

Diseases of zoonotic origin (the pathogen is found in an animal but makes the leap to the human species) are those that can cause these conditions to be met, since the virus can mutate in these animals until, by chance, it has the characteristics that, if they reach humans, can trigger a pandemic. As has happened with the virus with which we are living.<\/p>\n

Today, in addition to COVID-19, we are suffering from other pandemics such as HIV \/ AIDS and tuberculosis<\/strong>. But throughout history, we have faced many others such as the Black Death, the Spanish Flu of 1918, the Justinian Plague, the Antonine Plague, the Asian Flu, etc. And the term, which comes from the Greek bread<\/em> (everything and demos<\/em> (town), already gives us a clue of its meaning.<\/p>\n

These pandemics, in addition to having a global impact, are usually associated with high mortality. And, as we have seen, these are new diseases where the pathogen-human relationship is not well established, so neither the virus is accustomed to our body nor is our body accustomed to the virus.<\/p>\n

This causes both the virus to cause more damage to our body (remember that no virus wants to kill us, but go unnoticed) and our immune reactions to be more aggressive. All this means that the symptoms are generally serious and that, especially in people at risk, can lead to the death of the patient. It should come as no surprise that pandemics (COVID-19 has already been responsible for 5.3 million deaths) have been responsible for the loss of countless lives throughout history<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

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