Is contagion having the last word?

Abstract

The Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Corona Virus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and the disease it causes, i.e. Covid-19 outbreak1, emerged around the same time I had just finished teaching postgraduate students on two widely presented models: the epidemiologic and the demographic transitions2,3. In our discussions, we tackled the classical presentations of these two models. The epidemiologic transition posits that as countries become more developed, infectious or communicable diseases contribute a smaller proportion of their overall mortality while non-communicable diseases predominate.