Talk:Pandemic/Archive 1

Definition
The definition of pandemic given in the intro is controversial and always debated where epidemiologists cluster. A pandemic must involve people from different parts of the world and potentially the globe. The definitions are easy to remember in general terms if one just goes back to the roots of the prefix - en, means exists within, epi means above (the usual number of cases) and pan means "everywhere or everything" so if you have them down you don't have to remember any more. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 123.211.107.86 (talk) 20:23, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

WHO Level
It's currently 4, not 3. This is a trivial edit, please make it. http://www.who.int/csr/disease/avian_influenza/phase/en/index.html Themusicgod1 (talk) 22:49, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Definition
I could be wrong but it seems to me that the 'definition' given on this page from the WHO is not meant as a definition at all but as a set of conditions that, when met, may give rise to a pandemic. Is this the case? If so, can we get a proper definition of what a pandemic is? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.193.28.179 (talk) 22:24, 27 April 2009 (UTC)


 * The WHO criteria are for various alert stages or 'levels' in preparation for pandemic conditions which is defined as level 6. There is far more need for the listing of the WHO levels and their criteria than for a subarticle on each of the pandemics in history.  Those should be in a list of links to separate articles.  The WHO criteria are what people need to know for planning purposes and should be prominent in this article.  Moreover, WHO just changed definitions in the middle of the current outbreak and there is much confusion resulting from this.  This article is in desperate need of expert attention and editing down.  Jim Bowery (talk) 23:00, 27 April 2009 (UTC)


 * It's very hard to even find the original definition of a pandemic according to the WHO anywhere, or to trace what the exact changes are the WHO applied just before declaring the pandemic. There's only some press statements about alleviating the conditions, which was apparently done so. The result can be googled anywhere (and is on this page), but it might be interesting to spice this article with the original definition to clarify the need to change it. I know of 1 possible reference that I cannot check myself: an interview with epidemiologist Tom Jefferson in Der Spiegel from July 2009. 94.224.138.5 (talk) 00:16, 3 November 2009 (UTC)


 * - Depending on the course of a disease in a population there are different regimes. A localized occurence with limited numbers of infected is an outbreak, exponential initial growth and propagation in space is an epidemic while we speak of a pandemic state if a nonzero fraction of the total population is infected at all times. Think of an epidemic as a forest fire and AIDS as an example for a pandemic. This is my understanding coming from the field of modeling (see SIS model). Any opinions about that? --133.65.54.177 (talk) 03:47, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Amen! If a pandemic is an epidemic an a larger global scale, who says it has to be infectious?? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Lola918 (talk • contribs) 03:54, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

phases
image:WHO pandemic phases.png should be added to this article. 76.66.202.139 (talk) 10:20, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Where, and what would the caption be? Hiding T 11:29, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Well since this particular table has been modified to specifically refer to Influenza, I suppose at the influenza section would be good. The caption would be "WHO influenza pandemic alert phases" 76.66.202.139 (talk) 13:54, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Definition -- a disease and condition
I propose that the following sentence should be inserted before the second sentence (= A widespread endemic disease ~).

"A pandemic can mean both a disease and condition."

--05:48, 17 August 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.211.221.21 (talk)

Issues
Issues, and one real problem:


 * If the "Antonine plague" was smallpox, it was less virulent than in more recent times.
 * Identification of black plague with bubonic plague has been questioned.
 * The list of cholera epidemics jumps from fourth to sixth. Vicki Rosenzweig


 * Well, I hate to bring it up, but the causal agent of all non-modern plagues, historic and prehistoric, is always subject to question. Opinions on these things run in fashions -- like drapery fabrics.  The popular one these days is anthrax -- here, there, and everywhere.  These mysteries will never be "solved" absolutely, but keep in mind that the immunity of the population and the bio ID of the disease strain has a significant impact in each occurance.  When a disease is new to a population (i.e. the America's) the impact can be horrific.  But later on, .....  For what it's worth, I think the Antonine Plague (above) was measles, and the Plague of Cyprian a couple of generations later was smallpox.  But that is just my opinion and historians vary.  Sorry to run off at the mouth, but it is strange and unreasonable for modern people to expect absolute truth about historic occurances (even in Wiki).  Comments welcome.  WBardwin 02:53, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

History of medicine?
I'm taking this out of history of medicine category (it doesn't seem to fit very well there, for what the content is) but sticking the list of historical epidemics there (effectively in its place). Just leaving this note so there's a place for people to get all outraged about the switchabout if they want. --Viki 21:18, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Quoted
To see this quoted and updated, see http://www2.townonline.com/hudson/opinion/view.bg?articleid=112611 13:24, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Plague/History/Social Impact
Some of us on the history side of Wiki have been putting together articles on historic plagues. Recently, discussion has turned to organizing this material for better retrieval by our readers. We have created one new disambig. page and may consider something like a master article, categories, and list organizations. Articles like this one would be referenced and perhaps involved in the shuffle. If you would like to comment on this type of thing, I will check back here periodically or you might comment on the talk page of a (perhaps temporary) article simply called Plague. Thank you. WBardwin 02:45, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

It concerns me that there are "summaries" of pandemics (here, for example), such as Justinian's Plague, in addition to an original article which lays it out in detail. There is probably a Wiki article somewhere that describes a policy on putting the same or summarized material in more than one place. So when high level details change (which would change a summary), articles have to be changed in many places, well beyond one contributor to keep up with. So the main article may be correct and all these scattered summaries wrong, or wrong in some detail. So I vote for disambig if this sort of scatter summaries can be avoided. Whatever is done, I would think that a single summary could be referenced for all disease-oriented summaries (there may be others that need different facts, like historical ones, for example)67.8.201.227 03:22, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Article on Avian Infuenza

 * "In June 2005, there's work on this wiki regarding preparation for an avian influenza pandemic. It is the first time a pandemic can be foreseen, maybe averted, maybe mitigated.  The reader is urged to go to that page and maybe do some work there."

Moved Lugon's contribution from article page for consideration by contributors. WBardwin 16:20, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

AIDS
I truly do not understand the rationale for AIDS not being included in the list of pandemics. SARS, which did make the cut, occurred in a tiny population for a tiny timespan compared to the ravages of AIDS through Africa and Asia. - Montrealais


 * I don't either. It seems to fit the definition of an epidemic and is mentioned as such in that wiki article. Given the global effect of HiV infections (incidentally, few epidemics mentioned in the pandemics article actually are global, eg, everything mentioned before the Black Death), it warrants a mention IMHO. -- KarlHallowell 13:09, 23 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Looking more carefully, even the CDC considers HIV/AIDS to be a current pandemic.


 *  CDC's HIV mission is to prevent HIV infection and reduce the incidence of HIV-related illness and death, in collaboration with community, state, national, and international partners. CDC’s programs work to improve treatment, care, and support for persons living with HIV and to help build capacity and infrastructure to address the HIV/AIDS pandemic.


 * Even if this disease isn't considered to be an epidemic (because the infection rate, though high, is "relatively low") in some regions, it certainly was in the 80's. Further, the remark neglects that since the rate of HIV infection apparently is currently increasing substantially in Asia, we should say that HIV/AIDS is epidemic in Africa and in Asia even though a small fraction of the population is infected. The rate of increase is a key component of the definition of "epidemic". -- KarlHallowell 18:26, 9 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Now the page lists AIDS under 'future pandemics', but then says that it is a pandemic now. The page needs to be updated.

aids isnt airbourne, take it off the list. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.178.233.224 (talk) 23:28, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

Plague
Wasn't there a third outbreak of plague, just before the great fire of london in 1666? I don't know whether it was bubonic or pnemonic though. Perhaps someone should look it up and verify, then add to the article? mastodon 01:36, 6 November 2005 (UTC)


 * The episode of plague in London, see Great Plague, was one of the last outbreaks associated with the Black Death pandemic. There were several "last gasps" of the disease in Europe during that later period.  The disease spottily reappeared in the 18th century as part of the international contagion known as the Third Pandemic.  What kind of information about this particular outbreak would you like to see in the Pandemic article?  WBardwin 22:01, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Concern about possible future pandemics
im deleting the bit that says: "As of 2004, these diseases have been so virulent as to limit their transmission (an effect known as "burning out")." because it says http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebola <-- here that: "One pervasive myth follows that the virus kills so fast that it has little time to spread. Victims die very soon after contact with the virus. In reality, the incubation time is usually about a week. The average time from onset of early symptoms to death varies in the range 3-21 days, with a mean of 10.1."

List of doomsday scenarios
Could use votes to save this article, thanks MapleTree 22:32, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Falsification of figures
Some of these figures, like 25 million dying in 1917-18 of which 17 million in India alone is stupid babble. Such ridiculuous numbers have not been recorded by numerous British historians of British India. If the authors of these figures do come across some verifiable sources (printed books from the pre SARS and Bird Flu era please!) please share them.

The total number of WWI casualties according to Wikipedia was 20 million. I wonder why the world press of the time did not fixate upon the "World Flu" instead of the "World War" or the Great Depression since the flu (according to this author) killed 20 percent more people than the war within a fourth of its duration.

All this attention has only come about since the Avian Flu and has resulted in every other author bumping up the number of flu-attributable deaths by the millions. These pandemics only exist in the minds of authors who seem to go for sensationalism more than fact, and who seem to be living in places which they think are immune from future pandemics. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.9.163.106 (talk) 17:10, 24 October 2007 (UTC)


 * I disagree - there are several sources citing that the Spanish flu was particularly lethal from well before anything was said about avian flu. Some sources:, , just from a quick google search. Note also two are from before the Avian Flu rumours started. It's quite well documented of it's severity. I believe the reason it wasn't in the press more widely was at the time press agencies were heavily influenced by their governments due to the ongoing war, and as such had strict orders what to print. 144.32.155.184 00:16, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

I agree about the wartime secrecy being the primary reason it wasn't more widely reported at the time. The main reason it is known as the "Spanish Flu" is that Spain was neutral during WWI and did not need to censor this information. In fact, there is strong evidence that it originated (in its pandemic form) in Kansas, and certainly did not originate in Spain.Frankceo (talk) 18:09, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Pandemics and notable epidemics through history
Pandemics and notable epidemics through history should be moved to the same article section in the "epidemic"-article.

I think that would make better sense. Working in the meantime on trying to improve the epidemic-article. KVDP (talk) 17:54, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Protection
Hiberniantears semi-protected page but put no sign/template thing at the top, so I did.—Wikimichael22 (talk) 05:24, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Why is this page protected?67.142.162.24 (talk) 20:48, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Inconsistent figures?
From this article: "The "Spanish flu"... eventually infected 2.5 to 5% of the human population, with 20% or more of the world population suffering from the disease to some extent"; ... compare with the opening of Spanish flu, which says "The pandemic is estimated to have infected up to one billion people: half the world's population at the time.[8]" Which is correct? Gzabers (talk) 19:38, 26 April 2009 (UTC)


 * No one knows. Recent numbers are better than estimates from even a couple years ago. WAS 4.250 (talk) 23:55, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Ebola virus and other quickly lethal diseases
For clarity sake the section titled "Ebola virus and other quickly lethal diseases" should be retitled "Viral Hemorrhagic Fever", since all examples given are VHF. Either that or insert non-VHF examples into paragraph. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 165.112.61.190 (talk) 15:37, 28 April 2009 (UTC)


 * I don't know that I can agree with that. Viral hemorrhagic fever as it's described in the article is the anatomically systemic disease caused by Ebola.  The symptoms of Ebola vary, although systemically it all seems to amount to VHF.  On the other hand, Ebola is not the only disease causing agent that can cause a hemorrhagic fever.  It is, however, the one such disease that is thought to present a grave public health concern.  I would say that would make it all the more important to distinguish that this is Ebola that they're talking about. 68.55.199.40 (talk) 17:36, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Smallpox subsection in need of revision
The statement "The disease killed an estimated 400,000 Europeans each year during the 18th century." is inaccurate, and is not true to it's referring article. The referring article indicates that, in fact, during the latter years of the 18th century, the disease was killing an estimated 400,000 people per year. The statement from the referring article does not attempt to approximate the average deaths per year during the entire century.

I propose this sentence instead "The disease killed an estimated 400,000 Europeans per year during the closing years of the 18th century." —Preceding unsigned comment added by Danjgregory (talk • contribs) 01:30, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Pandemics in Fiction section incorrect
The Pandemics in Fiction section has listed "The Road (2006), a post-apocalyptic fiction by Cormac McCarthy", but this book has nothing to do with pandemics at all. Please delete it.

Done Celestra (talk) 19:18, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

The movie "Outbreak" had the entire infected population of Type-2 Motaba isolated to one small town. As such, it could not be considered a pandemic, and should be removed from this list.

28 Days Later should also be removed from the list by someone since it is an example of an epidemic and not a pandemic. The Rage virus is isolated to the British Isle. Only in the sequel 28 weeks later do we see an outbreak in mainland Europe. 165.112.61.190 (talk) 15:00, 11 June 2009 (UTC) Pandemic is something that trent did in the 1800 hundreds by plaging england — Preceding unsigned comment added by 152.26.28.252 (talk) 16:13, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

Influenza
Should a note be included on this page that "influenza pandemic" is a specific term seperate from pandemic as it relates to other diseases.

Influenza seasonally occurs as a pandemic (widespread/global disease transferrance) every year (see seasonal influenza). Whereas an influenza pandemic specifically refers to a human disaster scenario whereby a new strain of influenza manages to emerge (often outside of the regular flu season), often with a high and/or atypical mortality/morbidity profile.--ZayZayEM (talk) 01:18, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

What About the Other STDs?
Chlamydia, Gonorrhea, and Herpes cases are far more prevalent than HIV infection. In the U.S. alone we're talking about 20 million new cases a year. And, there's no Shangri La country that's untouched by these diseases. 68.55.199.40 (talk) 05:48, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

More recent pandemics include the HIV pandemic and the 2009 flu pandemic.
Can someone either delete this sentence or cite a credible source for this please? Or at least mention in the sentence "according to..."? --Fenvoe (talk) 15:39, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Pandemic ?
Well: if pandemic means 'spread on a large area', say several continents, then, YES: sesonal flu are low-lethal level PANDEMICS. If seasonal flu are relatively not famous, they are, indeed, pandemic: "spreading on continent(s)". Yug (talk)  05:31, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Suggestion for Pandemics in fiction
I'm not as of yet confirmed to edit semi-protected articles, but I just thought I'd suggest Stephen King's The Stand for the Pandemic section. Thanks in advance if you do so. --Akirasfriend (talk) 00:53, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
 * ✅ -- Neil N   talk  ♦  contribs  01:08, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Definition
3 criterias are mentioned, and true, this is what the WHO says today. However, they did have another criteria before, see internet archive here: An influenza pandemic occurs when a new influenza virus appears against which the human population has no immunity, resulting in several, simultaneous epidemics worldwide with enormous numbers of deaths and illness.

Also its something —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cjpman456 (talk • contribs) 22:04, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Kricke (talk) 01:41, 4 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Der Spiegel has an interview with epidemiologist Tom Jefferson in which he points this fact out, so this provides a WP:RS for adding this information to this article. cojoco (talk) 00:02, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
 * So I've added it. cojoco (talk) 01:00, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Plague inconsistency?
This article states that the Plague of Justinian was the first recorded outbreak of bubonic plague. However, the table at List of epidemics shows bubonic plague as a possible cause of the Egyptian epidemic of 1400 BC. Issues: Jmacwiki (talk) 03:42, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Neither item is sourced.
 * If plague was the source of the Egyptian epidemic, how was that not an "outbreak"? (That is, does "outbreak", as used here, refer to some specific technical characteristic?)


 * unsourced information should be ignored, and where appropriate deleted. That said, I think the meaning is that 1400 BC in Egyptian may have been plague, but the Justinian outbreak was definitely the cause of plague. Remember wikipedia is written by lots of different editors who don't cross-reference stuff. Find an error - research and fix it.ZayZayEM (talk) 01:14, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

plans
i suggest a section on government plans in case of a pandemic. Jake1993811 (talk) 09:38, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Possible copyright problem
This article has been revised as part of a large-scale clean-up project of multiple article copyright infringement. (See the investigation subpage) Earlier text must not be restored, unless it can be verified to be free of infringement. For legal reasons, Wikipedia cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or printed material; such additions must be deleted. Contributors may use sources as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences or phrases. Accordingly, the material may be rewritten, but only if it does not infringe on the copyright of the original or plagiarize from that source. Please see our guideline on non-free text for how to properly implement limited quotations of copyrighted text. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously. Diannaa (talk) 22:57, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

Tuberculosis
According to the article TB infects a third of the world population and that new infections occur at a rate of one per second. The source cited does not say this. The cited source specifies that one-third of the world population is infected with latent TB and that one-third of HIV patients have TB. The same error, citing the same source, is repeated on the Tuberculosis page.

Also, if infection rates are so high and the disease is so widespread, why is it not listed as a current pandemic? Crossalchemist (talk) 21:12, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Why isn't tuberculosis listed under section 3 "Current pandemics"? It is widespread and one of the top global infectious diseases, according to the World Health Organization. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:120B:2C77:C61:138:E1F6:91C7:3F72 (talk) 17:51, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Current pandemics
Under 'Current pandemics' only HIV and AIDS are listed. But a pandemic (the article tells us) is an infectious disease. Neither HIV nor AIDS is a disease. HIV is a virus, and AIDS is a syndrome (a syndrome being a collection of related symptoms). 109.148.210.250 (talk) 15:58, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
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External links modified
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Fact Check Opening Paragraph
although the article states in the opening paragraph that the Black Death killed 75 million in 1350, the actual article on the Black Death states it was over a period of time, 1346-1353. Does anyone want to adjust this? Also, the 75 million figure is the low end estimate. According to the Wikipedia article on the Black Death, the death statistic figure may have been as high as 200 million. L. Thomas W. (talk) 15:05, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

External links modified (January 2018)
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SARS-CoV-2
This is not the place to update current events about the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak, information here should be kept to a minimum and according to WP:UNDUE it does not make any sense to have more than a short few sentence paragraph about this. In the larger context, CoV-2 is still much less deadly than the black death, Spanish flu or the HIV epidemic. --hroest 19:19, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

Ebola and Zika?
Why are these included under "Notable outbreaks"? As far as I know, they were not pandemics. Can someone point to a reliable source classifying them as such? Otherwise they should be removed. SBareSSomErMig (talk) 11:59, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

Editsemiprotected
Please add the pandemic portal Portal:Pandemic to the see also section

-- 67.70.32.186 (talk) 00:57, 22 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done for now: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the template. — MRD2014 (talk) 18:56, 22 March 2020 (UTC)
 * When is it needed to establish consensus when WP:EDIT for WP:BRD says be bold ? Why do you think it is wrong to add the link to the PORTAL page for pandemics to the article page for pandemics? Where is the controversy to this edit request? What is your objection to this request? PER WP:EDITREQUEST  How is this controversial? -- 67.70.32.186 (talk) 05:13, 23 March 2020 (UTC)


 * Support: I have no objection to the pandemic portal being added to the See also section, in fact I'm surprised it's not already there. Why are you objecting MRD2014? Rodney Baggins (talk) 07:56, 23 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Done. I wasn't necessarily objecting, I thought it might have needed more discussion, but I have added it. — MRD2014 (talk) 17:11, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

U.S.A. Centric
"Malaria" and "Yellow Fever" are persistent (tropical) diseases which kill millions, yet the article just spouts some obscure U.S.A. history.

200.68.142.32 (talk) 04:51, 24 March 2020 (UTC) baden k.

It is incorrect to state COVID-19 originated in China as stated in this article
This sentence "A new strain of coronavirus which originated in Wuhan, Hubei province, China, in late December 2019,[27]" is unsubstantiated. Just because the first case was declared in China does not mean the virus came from China. To say so is racism.

--208.72.125.2 (talk) 16:42, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

Global warming is contributing to skyrocketing rates of infectious disease, add?
Regarding the effects of global warming on human health:

X1\ (talk) 06:46, 12 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Abrahm Lustgarten How Climate Change Is Contributing to Skyrocketing Rates of Infectious Disease; A catastrophic loss in biodiversity, reckless destruction of wildland and warming temperatures have allowed disease to explode. Ignoring the connection between climate change and pandemics would be “dangerous delusion,” one scientist said. ProPublica 7 May

Concept of "wave" and "second wave"
Sometimes I'm still amused by the tendency of humans to focus immensely on certain things... and thus absolutely neglect very obvious subjects of interest: in the case of "Pandemic" what's the hot current topic? Well, "second wave" would come to mind! No satisfactory DEFINITION or EXPLANATION by googling in the press. Let's turn to beloved knowledgeable Wikipedia... The Pandemic article SHOULD do the trick: for sure there's a WHO table with an 8th stage named "Possible new wave", hum, no hyperlink, nothing else. Article Search brings a long "Wave" disambiguation page with lots of entries, none whatsoever related to that subject. Text Search gives nothing either! COME ON YOUNG GUYS AND DOLLS, YOU CAN DO BETTER ;-) -- AlainR345Techno-Wiki-Geek 19:48, 26 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Simply a second period of increase in the number of dead per week? Historically, it is a well known term in the context of Spanish_flu, when also many young adults died because they were tired on restrictions.82.196.112.105 (talk) 18:36, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

A more accurate definition
"A pandemic is an epidemic occurring on a scale that crosses international boundaries, usually affecting people on a worldwide scale." I have nothing against it; it is essentially right. However, it seems to be quite obscure to someone. For example, Turkmenistan and North Korea won't probably ever report a single case of COVID-19. So how many countries must be affected by a disease in order for WHO to declare the situation a pandemic? One half, two thirds, three fourths, 90% of countries of the world?.. I think a more accurate definition would be appropriate. 89.149.79.148 (talk) 15:05, 21 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately, there is none. Ruslik_ Zero 09:28, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

HIV/AIDS...
HIV/AIDS isn't a pandemic:


 * The WHO doesn't call it a pandemic, a pandemic is officially a pandemic when the WHO declares it a pandemic.
 * Other widespread sexually transmitted diseases aren't included, why is HIV/AIDS a pandemic then?
 * HIV/AIDS is an endemic.
 * Says 1.7 millions of infections of HIV/AIDS not 1.7 million new infections of HIV/AIDS

2001:1C01:3909:6900:3854:2164:F9BC:4407 (talk) 13:17, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

More appropriate lead image for COVID-19
I propose replacing the disinfectant spraying image with one of the following. Disinfectant spraying is not the predominant "face" of the pandemic for most people, or in news stories. Hospitals are, including the following "field hospitals".

I favor #3 because of image quality and the number of beds. What do you think? —RCraig09 (talk) 21:20, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

Wikidata list of pandemics
Please enter correct data in these Wikidata items. Some columns of the following auto-generated list can be useful in various language versions of this article. The content may also affect the content of a future Wikidata based Infobox pandemic. Tomastvivlaren (talk) 13:23, 12 March 2020 (UTC) ---

Are regional outbreaks epidemics or pandemics?
Can we rename for example 2020 coronavirus pandemic in the United States to 2020 coronavirus outbreak in the United States? Or to 2020 coronavirus epidemic in the United States? And even more so reagrding 2020 coronavirus pandemic in North Dakota?

Or at least in Wikidata, can we classify regional outbreaks as epidimics instead of pandemics, but part of for example the 2020 coronavirus pandemic? See also this discussion: Wikidata:Wikidata_talk:WikiProject_COVID-19. Tomastvivlaren (talk) 20:30, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

protected - deaths needs a date
Could someone add (November 2020) to the figure for covid deaths. It doesn't have date and is therefore meaningless. 84.70.145.31 (talk) 15:39, 31 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Actually it's worse than that - people are updating the figures without changing the reference. All updates need a date! 84.70.145.31 (talk) 00:38, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

Bad English
This is totally bad English, because "pandemic" is an adjective, which turned into a noun denotes someone suffering from a pandemia (or pandemy), just like with alcoholic. academic, maniac, epileptic and so on. The problem seems to be that "pandemia" sounds too much like "anemia", a blood disorder (too much panda bears in your blood). --83.137.6.226 (talk) 22:02, 19 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Do you have evidence for your claim? 2601:640:4000:3170:4115:DB1:F9A0:9AE4 (talk) 01:35, 13 April 2021 (UTC)
 * I cannot find any sources that claim this. Can you please add a link to confirm? HenryOmarCCCmango (talk) 10:00, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

Notable Outbreaks - Chicago News Paper Headlines Photo caption
Caption reads "1918 Chicago newspaper headlines reflect modern mitigation strategies for the Spanish flu, such as increased ventilation, arrests for not wearing face masks, sequenced inoculations, limitations on crowd size, selective closing of businesses, curfews, and lockdowns.[62]" The section about arrests for not wearing face masks is actually quite misleading, the image actually reads "arrests for open face sneeze or cough"  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jhazan72 (talk • contribs) 14:09, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Good points. Image caption is now changed. ✅ — RCraig09 (talk) 17:35, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

"Pendamic" listed at Redirects for discussion
A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Pendamic. The discussion will occur at Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 August 23 until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. SunDawn talk  04:10, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

Level of stupidity in this article is enormous.
How is it possible to use so many words on an article without defining what an pandemic is? It must require a colossal effort to avoid the most central and basic question. How high must the CRF be in order for it to be classified as an pandemic? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.230.168.252 (talk) 16:18, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
 * The definition given in the first sentence makes it pretty clear what a pandemic is, so I'm not sure what you're referring to exactly. X-Editor (talk) 22:08, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
 * What do you mean by CRF? If you mean case fatality rate (CFR) then it obviously doesn't define a pandemic. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:30, 2 December 2021 (UTC)