What Is A Pandemic Anyway?
This pandemic word has been getting tossed around a bunch in the media lately. Ever since the World Health Organiztion started raising the pandemic alert level back in April of 2009 the media started tossing the P word out there like it was a bad cliche or a Geiko commercial. But what is a pandemic anyway? What makes one disease a pandemic and another one a run of the mill epidemic?
To answer that question lets start with that other, over-used media phrase “epidemic“.
Epidemics are all about predictability. (Not rate of spread or numbers of individuals effected.) So lets say you’re a run of the mill influenza virus and you’re off doing your seasonal influenza thing. The Centers for Disease Control may predict that you’ll infect 8.2-12.9% of the population this year.
To become an epidemic you need to beat your numbers. You need to outperform your statistical curve. Step up big time and infect 14% of the population and you too may be granted the status of “flu epidemic”.
Pandemics are a bit different. Pandemics need to meet a few more criteria before they get dubbed pandemic.
