7 ms·
I was under the impression that the Pandemic label was a response to objective criteria, not subjective decision of leadership. In particular, one of those fac
by SkyPuncher 7y ago
I was under the impression that the Pandemic label was a response to objective criteria, not subjective decision of leadership.
In particular, one of those factors was sustained duration of the outbreak. My understanding is we finally crossed the time threshold for declaring this a Pandemic.
- reaperducer 7y agoI believe I read somewhere that it had to be declared an epidemic on two continents for it to be called a pandemic.
- TeMPOraL 7y agoI've heard they were counting off countries with cases. My wife told me the other day that she read that "4 more countries with coronavirus and WHO will call it pandemic".
- tigershark 7y agoFor H1N1 as far as I remember the pandemic designation happened far earlier and that was a joke of virus compared to covid-19 comparing the mortality rates.
- sub7 7y agoAny successful containment measure will be later criticized as "too early" and/or "too aggressive". Much, much better than the alternative. H1N1 was serious and compared to this, well handled.
- SpicyLemonZest 7y agoWas it? Maybe my perception is skewed from being in one of the earliest countries hit, but my memory of H1N1 is that we pretty much gave up everything but vaccine development once we realized it was uncontainable.
- StavrosK 7y agoWhat was the difference between the handling of this and H1N1?
- tigershark 7y agoH1N1 was declared a pandemic but was not handled at at all and a huge amount of people got it, but luckily it was a joke of virus with 2 orders of magnitude less deaths than covid-19.
- rimliu 7y agoCan you post exact numbers you are talking about?
- ncallaway 7y agoThis is exactly right. Disease response can be very paradoxical. An extreme and early response, can turn a disease into a trivial event. Which raises questions about whether such an aggressive response is necessary. It can be, in many ways, like using an umbrella in a rainstorm. You get to the destination, and you're totally dry, so what was the point of the umbrella? With these disease outbreaks, there's no counterfactual we can run to see what would have happened if we didn't respond early.
- tigershark 7y agoNo, it wasn’t. It had pretty much the same mortality rate as the normal flu.
- ls612 7y agoH1N1 was not successfully contained at all, it infected 15-20% of the world's population and ended up just being a bad flu strain, not a world ending pandemic as only 575k people died (for a mortality rate of around .05%)
- Kiro 7y agoWhat are you talking about? One billion people were infected by H1N1. It wasn't handled at all.
- starfallg 7y ago>H1N1 was serious and compared to this, well handled. The current COVID-19 epidemic caused by SARS-CoV-2 is many times more fatal than the 2009 H1N1 epidemic. The current epidemic has similar a fatality rate to the 1918 Spanish Flu. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_flu_pandemic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_flu_pandemic
- fumar 7y agoDo you have citations for the “10X as fatal” comment? I am having a hard time understanding the situation because facts are hard to come by.
- baq 7y agogo to /r/covid19 - it's one of the highest SNR about this clusterf* on the wide internet. plenty of CFR (case fatality ratio) estimation papers there.
- mumblemumble 7y agoThat Wiki link would serve as a citation. The table in the "comparisons to other pandemics and epidemics" section gives a point estimate for the case fatality rate of 0.03%. If we assume that the final rate for covid-19 is somewhere in the 1-2% range that's what I last heard, that would mean that "10X as fatal" is an understatement - more like 30-70x as fatal.
- headmelted 7y agoAbout 240x as fatal. The mortality rate is presently 6.01% and fluctuating, making this virus about twice as deadly as the Spanish Flu.
- zuminator 7y agoYou've claimed this three times already. Do you have a substantiating link? Furthermore, saying "six point oh one percent" instead of just "approximately six percent" gives a false air of precision that could not possibly hold -- even you admit the estimate is still in flux.
- adrr 7y agoH1N1 mortality rate was 0.05% and that’s under rate of a standard flu season.
- andrejk 7y agoWHO had a good section in their situation report a few days ago comparing Covid-19 and the standard flu: https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situation-reports/20200306-sitrep-46-covid-19.pdf?sfvrsn=96b04adf_4 https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situati...
- twistedanimator 7y agoYeah, it's like we're trying to find the correct balance between nonchalance and action. I for one lean towards nipping things in the bud and have been experiencing ever-increasing anxiety since I started watching Covid-19 in late January.
- baddox 7y agoIs there some guarantee that containment measures which are actually too early or too aggressive are "much, much better than the alternative?" It seems to me that such a claim is ignoring that there are actual costs to containment measures instead of actually comparing the costs of containment measures with the costs of delaying them.
- anticensor 7y agoSooner or later would an easily transmissible virus with both influenza and pneumonia characteristics arise.
- bjornjajajaja 7y agoAnd thus it begins: Mother Nature cleansing the world of the human virus. All we do is rape the planet—what did people expect? COVID19 is just the beginning.
- dang 7y agoPlease don't do this here.
- Aunche 7y agoA lot of people criticized the WHO exaggerated the danger of H1N1, which is partially why they were a lot careful about raising alarms this time.
- hinkley 7y agoI was telling someone the other day that H1N1 is seen as being not that big of a deal, and if another one or two pan out that way, then the next one after that will kill a lot of people because they start thinking that it was a 'cry wolf' sort of situation. Look at the situation with vaccines. Your grandparents getting vaccines was a no-brainer. They heard stories of people getting polio or the measles and it was serious shit. Three generations later we have conspiracy theories about vaccines, I think because so few iminently deadly diseases have gotten a vaccine lately. We are down to the tricky ones, and cultural memory of the others is starting to crack.
- mcguire 7y agoThe definitions of "outbreak", "epidemic", and "pandemic" have nothing to do with disease severity.
- austincheney 7y agoH1N1 spread far faster and killed far more people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza_A_virus_subtype_H1N1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza_A_virus_subtype_H1N1
- casefields 7y agoThe reason people are trying to downplay H1N1 is because they hate the flu comparison. People understand the risks and accepted deaths, from the flu. That bothers the doom and gloom folks.
- danso 7y agoAlso, what's hard to remember is that we already had (or were very close) to a vaccine candidate for H1N1 by the time it was declared a pandemic in April 2009. Even before the U.S. declared a national state of emergency, more than 11M+ vaccine doses had been produced for the U.S alone: https://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/vaccination/updates/101609.htm https://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/vaccination/updates/101609.htm AFAIK, scientists are still trying to develop a covid-19 vaccine candidate. And after they have one, there will be many months before millions of doses can be produced and distributed.
- echelon 7y ago> Pandemic label was a response to objective criteria Modeling the causal impact of their criteria in light of data from the COVID-19 pandemic could reveal how different messaging strategies applied at different thresholds impact the spread of the virus. The leadership could have done this months ago and estimated how proactive versus inactive quarantine efforts would impact morbidity. They have to know their role in persuading the public and government officials. You don't have to stick to a rigid and inflexible criteria when thousands of human lives are at stake. When you define the criteria, you can also change them.
- Cuuugi 7y agoI don't understand what you think is to be saved by inciting panic. There's plenty of coverage, all this classification does is open up money from the IMF I believe. A Pandemic classification doesn't change most people's behaviors, but it does cause toilet paper/hand sanitizer shortages.
- rconti 7y agoAt least in the US, companies and other organizations are hesitant to be the first ones to stick their necks out and cancel events/encourage remote work. Our federal government's incompetent/evasive/opaque response to the crisis has let the burden fall on local governments in the hardest-hit areas. Labeling this a pandemic would have given cover to organizations that wanted to be more cautious but were afraid of "looking stupid".
- mcguire 7y agoMonths ago? The first cases were identified in Hubei on 29 December. The first cases of COVID-19 outside of China were identified on January 13 in Thailand and on January 16 in Japan.
- concerned_user 7y agoFrom the definition: A pandemic is an epidemic of disease that has spread across a large region; for instance multiple continents, or worldwide. We knew and saw that weeks ago. Declaration of official pandemic means world bank pandemic relief fund program gets activated as long as many other clauses in different contracts and agreements. There is an influence on WHO and the people behind it didn't want pandemic to be declared too soon. If it was declared 3-4 weeks earlier there could be many lives saved in countries like Iran, what is happening in Africa is not known at all due to no testing but situation is probably bad.
- nemonemo 7y agoThis definition has too much room for subjectivity. It needs objective criteria. Or maybe WHO might need to have a numerical metric that says high large the impact of a virus or its associated disease is, just like the earthquake magnitude.
- starfallg 7y agoThis really highlights the critical design flaw of the World Bank's Pandemic Emergency Financing Facility (funded by the pandemic bonds). By the time the conditions are triggered and funds distributed, it's already way too late into the pandemic. These fund should be made much earlier and more should be diverted into proactive measures to maximise effectiveness.
- beaunative 7y agoThat's kind of the purpose, if its standards were too low, it would be triggerred too many times that we won't have any of it left to do anything honestly. The World Bank's Program is always suppose to be an emergency backup we hope never to use instead of substitute for a proper government planning in times of pandemic.
- ensiferum 7y agoIn Africa there is still natural selection. That means any adult is most likely much more stronger with better immune system than those in Western world without such process. It could possibly actually mean that for the majority of population in the underdeveloped African countries Coronavirus is not as bad as it is for the weak populace in for example Europe. Edit: not sure what's with the down votes. This isn't to disparage African people but it's common knowledge many states are underdeveloped. People don't have access to health care or sanitation or clean drinking water. Dysentery diarrhea and malaise are normal. Any person who reached adulthood in such conditions is obviously a survivor. Don't you agree?
- forkexec 7y agoThat's ironic because the WHO supposedly doesn't use the category "pandemic" or 6-phases of pandemic anymore. https://canoe.com/news/world/who-no-longer-uses-pandemic-category-but-covid-19-still-emergency https://canoe.com/news/world/who-no-longer-uses-pandemic-cat...
- laufj 7y agoThe WHO themselves said that there is no longer an official criteria for something being a pandemic.