What is a Pandemic?
She coughs into her hand on the train, and touches the rail she was holding on to. Later, someone going home from work boarding the same train holds on to that railing. He goes home and embraces his family. The children go to school the next day an interact with the children there. All the children go home and interact with their parents. The parents go to work and interact with their co workers. A few days later people around that area go down with a virus. This is a pandemic. The word pandemic comes from the Greek word pandemos which means “pertaining to all people”. A pandemic is a serious outbreak of a infectious disease; it is when a disease emerges from someone and it is easily transferable from person to person. A pandemic is an epidemic of disease that is spreading rapidly into human populations across a large area. For example, the disease is first spotted in the United States and it spreads to China, a pandemic can spread up to even worldwide.
What is an Epidemic?
Common questions of this matter are: What is the difference between an Epidemic and a Pandemic? Well, an epidemic is a classification of a new disease that appears as new cases in a human population, it spreads at a rate that exceeds what is expected based on recent experiences. An epidemic is only localized to a city or small region. A pandemic is a epidemic that spreads worldwide, so the main difference is how far the disease spreads.
Pandemics throughout history
Bubonic Plague – 1855 A.D
Spanish Flu (avian flu) – 1918-1920 A.D
Swine Influenza – 2009
Breaking it Down
The World Health Organization has broken down pandemic stages into three periods and six stages.
Periods
-Interpandemic period
-Pandemic alert period
-Pandemic period.
Stages
“Stage 1
No animal influenza virus circulating among animals have been reported to cause infection in humans.
Stage 2
An animal influenza virus circulating in domesticated or wild animals is known to have caused infection in humans and is therefore considered a specific potential pandemic threat.
Stage 3
An animal or human-animal influenza reassortant virus has caused sporadic cases or small clusters of disease in people, but has not resulted in human-to-human transmission sufficient to sustain community-level outbreaks.
Stage 4
Human-to-human transmission of an animal or human-animal influenza reassortant virus able to sustain community-level outbreaks has been verified.
Stage 5
The same identified virus has caused sustained community level outbreaks in two or more countries in one WHO region.
Phase 6
In addition to the criteria defined in Phase 5, the same virus has caused sustained community level outbreaks in at least one other country in another WHO region.”
– taken from http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/148945.php
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sYSyuuLk5g – example on pandemics, movie Contagion
Recent Pandemics
A recent and still ongoing pandemic is HIV/AIDs. HIV spread to the United States and to a lot of the rest of the world around 1969. HIV is the virus that causes AIDS. AIDS is currently a pandemic, it has infection rates as high as 25% in Africa.
http://www.diffen.com/difference/Epidemic_vs_Pandemic
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/148945.php
http://flu.emedtv.com/pandemic/pandemic-stages.html
http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2007/05/17/4351070-how-to-prevent-a-pandemic