Any updates?

Dropped back in here after a bit 😁

so I started this thread

I mean, it’s just... it's everywhere lately—the media is constantly buzzing about everything from the flu to cancer—so I figured we could have a little discussion

then I came back to check out the replies, only to find the thread locked 🙏

Why though?

If the reason is that last post by the mod, it isn't even right—any medical professional would tell you the same thing...

Why can't people on the forum just talk about it?

Of course what she said was spot on. Defining an epidemic as "a widespread occurrence of an infectious disease in a community at a particular time" is pretty much the textbook definition...

You’re probably getting tripped up by how similar the terms epidemic and epidemiology sound—epidemiologists study the spread of all sorts of diseases within a population, but an epidemic is strictly tied to communicable or infectious ones.

In other words, nobody is ever going to declare a "cancer epidemic"—not now, not ever—so I honestly don't see the point in debating why the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services hasn't declared one. Because if we stick to those definitions, any supposed link between high cancer mortality rates in the USA and current political agendas just... evaporates.

I’ve never heard anyone declare a "laughter epidemic" before—it's a strange way to put it... though I did catch someone on the radio the other day talking about a "stress epidemic," even if nobody actually officially declared one.

As long as you all stay trapped inside those narrow little bubbles of yours, you aren't going to see much further than the tip of your own finger.