All facts are political. ‘Endemic’, for example. In the epidemiology textbooks it describes a pattern of…

All facts are political. ‘Endemic’, for example. In the epidemiology textbooks it describes a pattern of disease. But its origins? It was originally used to describe the persistence of disease in poor regions/countries. Like a character of those regions. /1

Just as poverty and crime have often been attributed to certain regions and even classes of people. Like a genetic endowment. Endemic disease was essentially a shrug, ‘nothing we can do, these people will always have cholera’. /2

Essentially then, endemicity was a political refusal to deal with infectious disease. Rather than some biological characteristic. Also why debate since that time has continued about the relationship between epidemicity and endemicity. /3

Endemicity was often just uncontrolled epidemic outbreaks. Saturation infection, usually of the marginalised. Just as crime is ‘endemic’ in neglected urban environments. /end