prevalence

Definition

A statistical measure epidemiologists use to describe how many people in a population have a disease at any given time, turning human suffering into percentages since forever. It's different from incidence (new cases) but gets confused with it constantly, even by people who should know better. Think of it as a disease's market share in the population.

Example Usage

The prevalence of seasonal allergies in our office is so high that we should probably just relocate to a sealed biodome.

Source: Epidemiology terminology

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