Masters of Health Magazine July 2021 | Page 83

The Definition of

a Pandemic

Judy Wilyman, BSc, MSc, Dip Ed, Ph.D.

In May 2009, the World Health Organization (WHO) changed the definition of a ‘pandemic’ based on the advice provided by a small select committee that was not required to reveal their conflicts of interest until 12 months later [1][2]. This change in definition was critical to the ability for the WHO to declare a swine-flu ‘pandemic’ in June 2009, and then a coronavirus pandemic in March 2020. 

Without this change to the definition of a ‘pandemic’, the WHO could not have declared a public health emergency under the International Health Regulations in March 2020, and this state of emergency could not have been extended into 2021. It is this arbitrary change to the definition of a ‘pandemic that has resulted in the removal of human rights globally and the imposition of a police state in many countries.

The change to the definition that occurred in 2009, was the removal of the need for there to be an ‘enormous number of deaths and illnesses to a new virus before a pandemic can be declared. This phrase was replaced with ‘cases’ in the new definition and a pandemic could be declared simply if there was an ‘increase in the number of cases of a disease’, regardless of whether these cases were serious or non-serious, or even if the cases had no disease symptoms at all.  

This change to the definition is critical because historically, epidemiologists and immunologists stated that ‘cases’ of an infectious disease do not indicate the risk of the disease to the community [3].

Once public health infrastructure and nutrition were improved in developed countries, in the mid-twentieth century, scientists recognized that the only meaningful statistics to inform governments of the risk of a disease to the community are the hospitalizations and case-fatality statistics in each demographic [4].

This is the reason why many governments stopped notifying of cases of infectious diseases in the 1950’s – 60’s.