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posted by martyb on Wednesday March 11 2020, @08:09PM   Printer-friendly
from the maybe-it-is-not-such-a-bad-time-to-be-living-alone-in-someone's-basement dept.

[Editor's note: We had been gathering together COVID-19 stories for eventual release as a round-up story. I lack time at the moment to personally gather all those together with this most recent submission. We will run the next round-up in the next few days. But given the significance of this submission, I wished not to delay it from being immediately released to the community. --martyb]

World Health Organization declares the coronavirus outbreak a global pandemic:

The World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic on Wednesday as the new coronavirus, which was unknown to world health officials just three months ago, has rapidly spread to more than 121,000 people from Asia, the Middle East, Europe and the United States.

“In the past two weeks the number of cases outside China has increased thirteenfold and the number of affected countries has tripled,” WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a press conference at the organization’s headquarters in Geneva. “In the days and weeks ahead, we expect to see the number of cases, the number of deaths and the number of affected countries to climb even higher.”

Tedros said several countries have demonstrated the ability to suppress and control the outbreak, but he scolded other world leaders for failing to act quickly enough or drastically enough to contain the spread.

“We’re deeply concerned both by the alarming levels of spread and severity, and by the alarming levels of inaction,” he said, just before declaring the pandemic. “We have rung the alarm bell loud and clear.”

[Ed. addition follows.]

Also at Ars Technica and cnet.

For those who might not be aware of the distinction, Wikipedia helpfully provides these summaries:

An epidemic (what we have had up to now with COVID-19):

An epidemic (from Greek ἐπί epi "upon or above" and δῆμος demos "people") is the rapid spread of infectious disease to a large number of people in a given population within a short period of time, usually two weeks or less.

[...]An epidemic may be restricted to one location; however, if it spreads to other countries or continents and affects a substantial number of people, it may be termed a pandemic.[1] The declaration of an epidemic usually requires a good understanding of a baseline rate of incidence; epidemics for certain diseases, such as influenza, are defined as reaching some defined increase in incidence above this baseline.[2] A few cases of a very rare disease may be classified as an epidemic, while many cases of a common disease (such as the common cold) would not.

By comparison, a pandemic (which has just now been announced for COVID-19):

A pandemic (from Greek πᾶν pan "all" and δῆμος demos "people") is an epidemic of disease that has spread across a large region; for instance multiple continents, or worldwide. A widespread endemic disease that is stable in terms of how many people are getting sick from it is not a pandemic. Further, flu pandemics generally exclude recurrences of seasonal flu. Throughout history, there have been a number of pandemics, such as smallpox and tuberculosis. One of the most devastating pandemics was the Black Death, which killed an estimated 75–200 million people in the 14th century. The current pandemics are HIV/AIDS and Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).[1][2] Other recent pandemics are the 1918 influenza pandemic (Spanish flu), and the 2009 flu pandemic (H1N1).


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  • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday March 12 2020, @03:19AM (1 child)

    by Grishnakh (2831) on Thursday March 12 2020, @03:19AM (#970072)

    he's programmed his minions to ignore science and call this a democratic hoax.

    Sorry, but Trump doesn't deserve credit for this. His voting base has been ignoring science for a long, long time before he was elected.

    he should be removed from office immediately.

    You think Pence will be any better? I dunno, maybe he will, but he's a total religious loon, so I have my doubts.

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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by LaminatorX on Thursday March 12 2020, @06:36PM

    by LaminatorX (14) <laminatorxNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Thursday March 12 2020, @06:36PM (#970334)

    Pence would be better than Trump in the same sense that losing one arm is better than losing both arms.

    Pence has little respect for science and probably thinks this plague is divine punishment for LGBTQ+ rights. OTOH, he is a capable administrator who actually cares about governing well (as he sees it). He didn't handle the HIV flare-up in Indiana very well at first, but I think he did learn from it. If not for Trump's marching orders, I expect he'd approach this as a public health crisis rather than primarily a PR & investor confidence one. The CDC official who Trump overruled re flying sick people back along on the same plane as healthy was Pence's public health guy back in Indiana. Pence probably would've listened to him (in between cooking up position papers that blame high suicide rates among queer teens on "unhealthy" behavior rather than lack of acceptance). Lacking Trump's personal animus against his predecessor, Pence probably wouldn't have dismantled the national pandemic response team just because Obama had created it.

    That being said, I'd still rather have two arms.