ALAMY, GETTY IMAGES ILLUSTRATIONS: DANIEL BRIGHT
A pandemic is a new outbreak of an infectious disease that affects a significant number of people in most countries around the world. There are several different possibilities for what happens afterwards. If we could stop all COVID-19 infections around the world then the virus would be eradicated. Unfortunately, eradication is incredibly difficult, and historically we have only successfully eradicated two diseases, smallpox and the cattle disease, rinderpest.