An epidemic may be most obvious when the number of cases goes from zero to a much greater number in a relatively short span of time. For example, before the middle 1970s, the U.S. population apparently had no cases of HIV infection or AIDS. For those years, the usual number of cases per year was zero. Since then, the country has seen a mounting number of HIV infections and AIDS cases each year, and it has become a raging epidemic. Compared to the previous usual number of cases per year, the United States faces an unusual occurrence of disease in the form of thousands of cases per year.
The same concept can be applied on a smaller scale. In the mid-1990s there still are small cities and communities where apparently no one in the population has yet acquired the HIV infection. Health officers who watch over these populations may speak legitimately of an HIV epidemic once the number of cases occurring in the population begins to mount, and there is no need to wait until there are hundreds or thousands of cases before describing the epidemic situation.
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