Here's where it gets a little tricky: There's no cut-and-dried classification system for outbreaks, epidemics, and pandemics.
Like many places in China this winter, Beijing has been hit by one of the worst flu epidemics in recent years.
The problem is particularly acute in geographical areas where residents face poverty, discrimination, epidemics or armed conflicts.
Over the years, China has developed an inter-agency and inter-regional network for detecting communicable diseases, which has supported efforts to address major epidemics such as H1N1 flu and Zika fever, said Qin Huaijin, an official in charge of science and education at the National Health and Family Planning Commission.
Now, of course, we say germs bring epidemics.
Instead, epidemics always involve interactions among genes, ecology, climate and human behavior, presenting profound difficulties for scientists trying to tease apart the contributing factors.
Scientists have found fructose appears to be linked to serious modern epidemics such as cancers, heart disease, hypertension, kidney damage, type 2 diabetes and even dementia.
