表现盛行病的pandemic和epidemic有什么区别？

克日，韩国、日本、意大利等国新冠肺炎确诊病例急剧增长，epidemic和pandemic这两个词反复在外媒报道中显现。那么毕竟应该用epidemic，照旧pandemic呢？

Tourists wearing protective masks walk near Duomo square, as a coronavirus outbreak continues to grow in northern Italy, in Milan, Italy, February 27, 2020. REUTERS/Yara Nardi

As the new coronavirus continues to spread around the world, the words epidemic and pandemic are showing up in news reports more often than they usually do. While the terms are closely related, they don’t refer to the same thing.

新冠病毒持续在举世转达之际，epidemic和pandemic这两个词比往常更经常地在讯息报道中显现。只管这两个词很相近，但二者指的不是同一种东西。

As the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC) explains on its website, “an epidemic occurs when an infectious disease spreads rapidly to many people.” Usually, what precedes an epidemic is an outbreak, or “a sudden rise in the number of cases of a disease.” An outbreak can affect a single community or several countries, but it’s on a much smaller scale than an epidemic.

影响控制和盛行病学专业职员协会在网站上表明道：“当一种影响性疾病敏捷转达给很多人时，就被称为epidemic。”通常，epidemic产生之前会有outbreak（疾病突发），即“某种疾病案例的忽然增长”。Outbreak约莫影响到单个社区或几个国度，但范围比epidemic小得多。

If an epidemic can’t be contained and keeps expanding its reach, public health officials might start calling it a pandemic, which means it’s affected enough people in different areas of the world to be considered a global outbreak. In short, a pandemic is a worldwide epidemic. It infects more people, causes more deaths, and can also have widespread social and economic repercussions. The spread of the Spanish influenza from 1918 to 1919, which killed between 20 and 40 million people around the world, was a pandemic; more recently, the H1N1 influenza created a pandemic in 2009.

假如一场epidemic不克不及被控制住，还在不休伸张，公用卫生官员约莫就要开头称之为pandemic，意思是这场盛行病以前影响到天下不同地区充足多的人，到了举世性突发的水平。简而言之，pandemic就是举世性的盛行病。Pandemic影响的人更多，招致的殒命人数更多，还约莫对社会和经济形成广泛的影响。1918年到1919年的西班牙流感在全天下招致2000万至4000万人丧生，这种盛行病属于pandemic；离如今更近的2009年的甲型流感也是pandemic。

Here’s where it gets a little tricky: There’s no cut-and-dried classification system for outbreaks, epidemics, and pandemics.

但是奇妙之处在于，outbreak、epidemic和pandemic三者之间没有既成的区分体系。

The WHO warned on Monday against using the term "pandemic" to describe the current outbreak.

天下卫生构造2月24日曾告诫称，本次新冠肺炎疫情不克不及用pandemic来形貌。

"It really is borderline semantics, to be honest with you,” Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told CNN earlier this month. “I think you could have people arguing each end of it. Pandemics mean different things to different people.”

美国国度过敏和影响病研讨所的所长安东尼·福奇本月早些时分报告CNN说：“老实说，这的确是界限语义学。我想你会听到人们各不相谋。不同的人对pandemic有不同的了解。”

英文泉源：Mental Floss

翻译&编纂：丹妮

泉源：中国日报网