近日，韓國、日本、意大利等國新冠肺炎確診病例急劇增加，epidemic和pandemic這兩個詞頻頻在外媒報道中出現(xiàn)。那么到底應(yīng)該用epidemic，還是pandemic呢？

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.

新冠病毒持續(xù)在全球傳播之際，epidemic和pandemic這兩個詞比往常更頻繁地在新聞報道中出現(xiàn)。盡管這兩個詞很相近，但二者指的不是同一種東西。

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.

感染控制和流行病學(xué)專業(yè)人員協(xié)會在網(wǎng)站上解釋道：“當(dāng)一種傳染性疾病迅速傳播給許多人時，就被稱為epidemic。”通常，epidemic發(fā)生之前會有outbreak（疾病暴發(fā)），即“某種疾病案例的突然增加”。Outbreak可能影響到單個社區(qū)或幾個國家，但規(guī)模比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.

如果一場epidemic不能被控制住，還在不斷蔓延，公共衛(wèi)生官員可能就要開始稱之為pandemic，意思是這場流行病已經(jīng)影響到世界不同地區(qū)足夠多的人，到了全球性暴發(fā)的程度。簡而言之，pandemic就是全球性的流行病。Pandemic感染的人更多，導(dǎo)致的死亡人數(shù)更多，還可能對社會和經(jīng)濟造成廣泛的影響。1918年到1919年的西班牙流感在全世界導(dǎo)致2000萬至4000萬人喪生，這種流行病屬于pandemic；離現(xiàn)在更近的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. 

但是微妙之處在于，outbreak、epidemic和pandemic三者之間沒有既成的區(qū)分體系。

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

世界衛(wèi)生組織2月24日曾警告稱，本次新冠肺炎疫情不能用pandemic來形容。

"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.”

美國國家過敏和傳染病研究所的所長安東尼·福奇本月早些時候告訴CNN說：“老實說，這確實是邊界語義學(xué)。我想你會聽到人們各執(zhí)一詞。不同的人對pandemic有不同的理解。”

英文來源：Mental Floss

翻譯&編輯：丹妮