The CDC's Shift From Vaping to COVID-19 Highlights the Crucial Differences Between Real and Metaphorical Epidemics

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), an agency that is currently focusing on the core mission reflected in its name, until recently was darkly warning us about a very different kind of "epidemic": an increase in e-cigarette use by teenagers, coupled with an outbreak of vaping-related lung injuries. The first concern did not involve any sort of disease; the latter did, but unlike COVID-19, the condition that the CDC dubbed "e-cigarette, or vaping, product use-associated lung injury" (EVALI) was not a contagious illness caused by a micoorganism. And contrary to the CDC's misleading nomenclature and dangerously misguided initial advice, the two developments appear to be completely unrelated.