If you didn't notice, there were, not one, but three headlines about communicable diseases on CNN last night. When I think of pestilence, I don't think of those diseases that are not communicable from person to person or animal to person. Lifestyle diseases and chronic diseases are not, by and large, pestilences that spread from one person to the next via body secretions. Alzheimer's, cancer and heart disease, while prevalent killers, are not diseases which develop rapidly and spread quickly from one person to the next such as ebola often infecting entire communities, regions, and countries.