. . . "A pandemic (from Greek \u03C0\u1FB6\u03BD pan \"all\" and \u03B4\u1FC6\u03BC\u03BF\u03C2 demos \"people\") is an epidemic of infectious disease that has spread through human populations across a large region; for instance multiple continents, or even worldwide. A widespread endemic disease that is stable in terms of how many people are getting sick from it is not a pandemic. Further, flu pandemics generally exclude recurrences of seasonal flu. Throughout history there have been a number of pandemics, such as smallpox and tuberculosis."@en .