What is a Pandemic?

What is a Pandemic?

Pandemic Influenza – a large, worldwide epidemic of a new human influenza strain; an outbreak of a new viral strain that spreads rapidly around the world.

An influenza pandemic is a public health emergency that rapidly takes on significant political, social, and economic dimensions.

As with other emerging infectious diseases, the course of its evolution is governed by factors – including the properties of a new causative agent – that cannot be known in advance and require some time to understand.

In the phases moving from the pre-pandemic period to a full-fledged pandemic, health authorities will need to make a series of emergency decisions in an atmosphere of considerable scientific uncertainty and fragile public confidence.

A pandemic is cyclical occurring every 20 to 30 years
A pandemic comes in 2 or 3 waves often months apart
It may take as long as 24 months for a pandemic to run its course

For the most part, the bird pandemic is not currently impacting the average person. On the other hand, if you are a bird or poultry farmer, the current H5N1 strain of avian influenza has already had a significant impact on your profession. If the virus mutates to humans, there will be an impact to pretty much everyone.

Bird Flu or “avian influenza” is not a concern to humans. The concern is that the virus mutates to humans and becomes a pandemic that then affects humans.

The H5N1 strain of avian influenza first surface in Hong Kong in 1997.

In the 20th Century, Spanish influenza (1918), Asian influenza (1957) and Hong Kong influenza (1968) were all Avian influenzas.

It is worth noting that the Swine Flu in 1976 and SARS in 2003 were epidemics and never reached pandemic proportions.

As of 3/20, there were 177 human cases that resulted in 98 deaths

As of 7/4, there were 229 human cases that have resulted in 131 deaths in 10 countries but there has not been sustained human to human transmission