the.com/epidemic
a rumor that learns to breathe, spreading faster than the truth that could stop it
means a disease, or by extension anything, that spreads rapidly and widely through a population in a short time
from From Greek epidēmia, 'a stay in a place, prevalence of disease,' built from epi- ('upon, among') and dēmos ('the people') — literally something that comes upon the people. The same dēmos lives in 'democracy' and 'demographics.' It passed through Latin and French as a medical term before English took it up, first as an adjective for diseases that swept through whole communities, later as a noun for the sweeping itself.
- word origin
- Greek for upon the people
- math curve
- each case spawns more until R drops below one
- non-disease use
- loneliness and obesity now called epidemics too
- first model
- Daniel Bernoulli math-defended smallpox jabs in 1760
- vs pandemic
- crosses enough borders, gets a scarier name
for instance
covid-19 pandemic — over 7 million deaths globally since 2019