For several years we’ve all heard about a pandemic, which essentially means a epidemic of some sort affecting a wide area. The word has been there all along.

We’ve seen pandemics throughout history. Anyone who has moved past fifth-grade world history knows about the Black Death caused by the Oriental rat flea. Then there was the smallpox, which started in Europe and spread throughout the world by European explorers. This disease is believed to have killed a sizeable population of native Americans in the New World.