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Comment by concerned_user | Hacker News Reader

From 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.

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This 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.

That'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.

That is word for word copy/paste from Wikipedia, not the WHO. What is the criteria the WHO uses to determine a pandemic?

Phase 6, the pandemic phase, is characterized by community level outbreaks in at least one other country [Italy|Iran] in a different WHO region [Europe|Eastern Mediterranean] in addition to Phase 5 that is characterized by human-to-human spread of the virus into at least two countries [China & South Korea] in one WHO region [Western Pacific]. No threshold of cases or deaths triggers the community level definition and is left to discretion of the WHO.

So the WHO has done everything right. It is the hallmark of professionalism to follow rules even under pressure. And the WHo is under a tremendous amount of pressure right now.

I have had trouble finding one as well (the parent comment).

I found this article which claims The WHO's use of the term is arbitrary based upon the conditions at hand.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/11/21156325/coronavirus-pand...

I suspect The WHO declared this a pandemic, based upon the article, out of concern for what they perceive to be insufficient government activity.

As I said there is probably no official WHO definition or criteria due to big economic impact of such declaration and it is decided on a case by case basis.

EDIT: I was wrong, here is the chart: https://www.who.int/influenza/resources/documents/pandemic_p...

Yes, it is. Parent never asked for WHO definition in the first place, I wonder if there is any at all, probably a commercial secret. Pandemic in WHO definition is when Director General of WHO declares it a pandemic, probably after confirming with member states who contribute, they were criticized in 2009 for declaring too early too, so criteria might have changed.

For reference, WHO's pandemic definition is phase 6 in this chart: https://www.who.int/influenza/resources/documents/pandemic_p...

that is, sustained community outbreaks in multiple WHO regions.

For someone like the WHO, you'll either be criticized for sounding the alarm for no reason or not sounding it fast enough.

This 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.

Yup; a month ago, they were saying it wouldn't be called a pandemic until it had (secondary) community transmission in a second country.

My reaction to this push alert today was "wait, they hadn't called it a pandemic yet??"

I believe India may even be of more concern than Africa. Of the two, India has the older aged population.

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