The NY Times talks about the whole crazy issue of talking about pandemic influenza issues. Who really knows what they mean by "pandemic?"
“There is a lot of misinformation in the medical literature, and it is really quite hard to figure out what is and what is not a pandemic,” said Dr. David M. Morens, an epidemiologist at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who has been studying the history of pandemics.
The word implies the rapid spread of an infectious disease to many countries in different regions, hitting each with more or less the same severity. But in fact, severity varies — not all people are infected at the same time, and not every country need be affected.
And there can be many other factors, including the numbers and percentages of people falling ill and dying; a population’s vulnerability to the disease, based on previous rates of infection; and the quality of health care facilities and disease monitoring systems.
Not least is that scientists do not know precisely how pandemics arise, what fuels them, why they vary in their lethality, why some occur in waves and why they stop.
It's an interesting article, reminds me of all the debates about deciding what a "weapon of mass destruction" is - only nukes? nuclear, biological and chemical weapons? just nukes and some bio agents? all CBRN hazards? toxic industrial chemicals? big jumbo airplanes? high-yield explosives? cherry bombs and a gallon of gasoline? People make it too hard to discuss serious topics. It's as if they change the definition to fit their argument. A common lexicon is a good thing to have when discussing serious public policy issues.
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