system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: why do people say that diabetes has a low incidence, but a high prevalence?
gpt
Incidence: New Cases

Prevalence: total cases.

Incidence and prevalence are both proportions to the total population, where incidence is new cases that developed during a time period, while prevalence is the total existing cases during that time period.

Basically, it isn’t like diabetes is infectious, so just a small group of people develop diabetes at any time. That’s incidence

But, because diabetes is largely manageable now, there are a lot of people who already developed diabetes that are still living with it. That’s prevalence.