Brushfire outbreaks.

A Pandemic is defined by Webster's as an "Outbreak of a disease."

That can mean most anything.  The fact of the matter is that the disease has broken out and is spreading.  Therefore, we are in a pandemic (regardless of size and numbers of fatalities).

Now, for this disease to become a "BIG" pandemic (What most people think of when the word is used.), it needs to become a Human to Human (H2H) disease and it needs to develop Ease of Transmission (EoT).

SARS was a pandemic that never developed Ease of Transmission.  It was H2H, but was easily corraled after it took a few airplane rides.

Usually as pandemics develop, you see brushfires (or outbreaks) with successive brushfires spreading to more and more people in the limited area of the outbreak.

We saw one of those brushfire outbreaks in Vietnam last week with a hundred people all becoming sick over a few days.  Like all brushfires, it burned itself out. (I think. Reporting is faulty in that part of the world.)

At present, it appears that we have experienced Human to Human brushfires in three countries (China, Vietnam and Indonesia) Some people tell me that I really should include Turkey and Thailand in my list of H2H brushfires, but their outbreaks could all be from Chicken to Human (C2H) transmission.  If it is really Human to Human in those countries, we will see a lot more brushfires.  

The Ukraine (the place where all the cows died overnight) and Moldavia have had thousands of human deaths due to "pneumonia" this winter, but since they are not reporting H5N1, we can't use their outbreaks for statistical purposes (Though I am convinced that they have a very serious problem in that part of Eastern Europe.).

JoeNeubarth wrote: We saw one of those brushfire outbreaks in Vietnam last week with a hundred people all becoming sick over a few days.

Did I miss something? I don't recall seeing anything about 100 ppl in Vietnam recently. Can someone provide a link please.

Thanks!

I feel pretty confident that Viet Nam is old news.  Indonesia seems to be the Hot Spot for the moment.  I have heard some interesting preliminary reports from Turkey,  but have not seen the confirmation from WHO that I expected to see.  Both Iraq and Turkey seem to have fallen off of the reporting grid.   I would reserve the word "pandemic" for an outbreak of illness that is very wide in scope.  I would use the term "epidemic" for a localized occurance of illness.  As H5N1 illness has occured in MANY countries over a vast geographical area, it may be splitting hairs to argue if it is indeed "pandemic".  As a zoonotic illness, it seems to more than adequately fit the definition.