Pandemic? Antonine Plague?

I was so blurred and shocked when my Form 4 brother asked me to answer this EST (English for Science and Technology) question:


In last 1800 years, seven diseases have caused pandemics around the world: SARS, Cholera, Antonine plague, Asian flu, Hong Kong flu, Spanish flu, Bubonic plague

Arrange the disease in the correct order starting from the one that caused the earliest pandemic in 165AD and ending with the one that caused the last pandemic in 2003.

Fill in the information such as type of pathogen, year of pathogen and number of deaths.


I was like….hah? What is pandemic? Haha, I would just admit that I’m ignorant, I have never heard of Antonine plague and Bubonic plague before. Luckily nowadays with internet we can solve this problem easily.


Below are a few extracts from Wikipedia,


Pandemic is an epidemic of infectious disease that spreads through populations across a large region; for instance a continent, or even world wide.

Okay, I don’t understand what is epidemic.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), a pandemic can start when three conditions have been met:

* Emergence of a disease new to a population.
* Agents infect humans, causing serious illness.
* Agents spread easily and sustainably among humans.


An infection that is epidemic appears as new cases in a given human population, during a given period.

Ohhhh….a new disease that kills a lot of people across a large area at a specific period is called pandemic...i see.

I continued reading on those pandemics to gain basic understanding. While I am astonished that the students nowadays can gain more general science and technology knowledge I also feel fortunate that I didn’t need to take the subject. EST was introduced a year after my SPM thus I have no idea at all its contents. Anyway, I'm thinking if I should ask my brother to drop this subject in SPM.