"after/since the outbreak" or "during the [current] outbreak"?

The definition of outbreak given by OLD is

• the sudden start of something unpleasant, especially violence or a disease

While that given for a pandemic is

• a disease that spreads over a whole country or the whole world

Those definitions suggest that an outbreak is a relatively momentary event whereas a pandemic is a prolonged one, and that an outbreak can occur without necessarily leading to a pandemic – that is, the disease gets nipped in the bud – just as a pandemic can occur without the disease having necessarily "broken out" – that is, without the disease having had a "sudden start".

Yet, it seems, from the similar number of Google Search results for the phrases "after the outbreak", "since the outbreak" and "during the outbreak", that "outbreak" is being used as a synonym of "pandemic". Isn't that usage incorrect?

Solution 1:

Well spotted. Although OED doubtless lists many subsenses, it's not easy to find an online justification for this usage, even though we know all too well at the moment that it's common.

Study.com has the following [emphasis mine]:

An outbreak is defined as anytime there are more cases of a disease than expected in a specific area. Since mumps [for instance is] extremely rare, thanks to vaccines, only a handful of cases in a city would constitute an outbreak.

The WHO definition is virtually identical.

And rather simplistically, any number of cases of COVID-19 is more than were expected a few months ago (it was unknown).

Longman gives the usual inchoative (in the general 'pertaining to a beginning' sense) definition, but includes an example sentence that shows a durative usage:

outbreak ... noun [countable] if there is an outbreak of fighting or disease in an area, it suddenly starts to happen: a cholera outbreak

Examples from the Corpus

• By 1946 the worst epidemic of poliomyelitis since the 1916 outbreak gripped the United States.

Dictionaries aren't infallible ... as we see, not even entirely consistent. It's best to check more than one. In depth.