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Yeah, the headline is using "epidemic" clickbaitly just to mean widespread, not transmissible.

The classic real example of actual transmissibility was the Zip drive click of death. A bad drive would damage disks, which would in turn damage another drive they were put in. The case was rarer than people thought but did happen. https://www.grc.com/tip/codfaq4.htm

I got an electric shock plugging in a zip drive once. They used to arc when you plugged the mains cord into the back of the drive or the power brick, I forget which.

The word epidemic does not imply contagiousness, not in the medical context and therefore definitely not outside of it.

Yes, the definition of "epidemic" literally refers to something being widespread (etymology derived from "upon the people"). It's not wrong to refer to e.g. an obesity epidemic despite obesity not being contagious.

Or "Coding machines" https://www.teamten.com/lawrence/writings/coding-machines/

I definitely witnessed this firsthand with dry-mate subsea connectors back in the 2010's. I called them "contagious hardware faults."