Health Class: What Is A Pandemic?

The World Health Organization has now moved the Global Pandemic Alert indicator to level 5.  This is just one level short of level 6, which is defined as a full, all-out, put plastic on the windows pandemic.

Here in Texas we’re seeing all kinds of reactions to the supposed threat of the swine flu virus.  The entire Fort Worth school system shut down due to a single teacher showing signs of the flu after returning from a trip to Mexico.

The whole school system!

Mexico has pretty much shut down all public venues, and the airlines that do still fly there, are piloting mostly empty planes back and forth.

We’ve already talked about the swine flu and it’s history.  But something that’s always confused me is just what exactly is a pandemic?  How is it different than an epidemic? And closer to home, should we be pulling our three year old out of his pre-school?

Time to crack the textbooks.

The Academics of Pandemics

Pandemics and epidemics both refer to the spread of infectious diseases among a population.

An epidemic is defined as an illness or health issue that is appearing in more cases than would normally be expected.  One or two cases of the flu don’t constitute an epidemic.Half of a school coming down with the same bug does.

Very fuzzy.  And by fuzzy, I mean there is no defined number of cases that can be used as a measuring stick.  Health officials are charged with deciding if an outbreak rates being classed as an epidemic.

A pandemic is the next step up from an epidemic.  It affects more of the population and is typically spread over a global area.  But still, no hard numbers are associated with the deifinition to allow an objective assessment of what is and what isn’t a pandemic.

Let’s take a hypothetical example and assume several people contract the same flu-like symptoms in a particular area. Let’s further assume that cases show up across the state, but the concentration remains localized in a few original cities. Some cases even turn up elsewhere in the nation, but the illness doesn’t catch on elsewhere. In the hubs where it is seen the infection rate remains more than you would expect to normally see. This is a classic example of an epidemic.

Now let’s take that same scenario but imagine the rate of infection started growing exponentially so that more and more cases were cropping up locally. When the rate of infection grows very fast it is likely, given favorable circumstances, that the epidemic grows into something more. Now we start seeing cases across the nation and the rate of infection is exceeding even that of an epidemic. It turns out in our hypothetical scenario that most of the population in the nation becomes affected by this flu. This is a pandemic.

So, I’m still confused.  Are we really at pandemic levels? Yet?  The rate of infection does seem to be rising pretty quickly.  But there are still less than a hundred reported cases here in the U.S.  We have had one death, but that was a toddler who had traveled to South Texas from Mexico.  And many of the U.S. cases are recovering on their own without the need for hospitalization or prescription therapy.

What do you think?  I’m all for erring on the side of caution, but are we over-reacting at this stage?

And if you want to monitor the expanding swine line, take a look here.

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