The plan includes a lofty goal of being able to produce and test a vaccine within 100 days of the discovery of a pandemic threat and then produce enough to vaccinate the entire population of the United States within three months. The plan then calls for the ability to send the vaccines quickly to anywhere in the world. To move faster, vaccines of the future would be skin patches or nasal sprays rather than sterile injections that require more manpower and careful storage. In all, the plan would cost $24 billion … just for this part.
The plan also calls for new and better personal protective equipment, including reusable gear. And the plan calls for a “Mission Control” kind of office that would oversee the national pandemic preparedness program.
When do we move from pandemic to epidemic? And what is endemic?
The anti-vaccine folks and virus deniers are already hashtagging #endemic as a way to say that if there was a pandemic, we surely must be on the back end of it and sliding into an endemic. The notion is than an “endemic” must be the END of a pandemic. Uh, no.
Endemic can be used as a noun or an adjective.
Endemic used as an adjective means a disease or condition “regularly found among particular people or in a certain area.” COVID-19 may always be with us and become endemic, like the flu, experts say.
Endemic can also be used as a noun. An endemic is “a disease outbreak that is consistently present but limited to a particular region. This makes the disease spread and rates predictable.” For example, malaria is considered an endemic in certain countries and regions.
Columbia University’s School of Public Health points out, “The difference between an epidemic and a pandemic isn't in the severity of the disease, but the degree to which it has spread.”
An epidemic:
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) describes an epidemic as an unexpected increase in the number of disease cases in a specific geographical area. Yellow fever, smallpox, measles, and polio are prime examples of epidemics that occurred throughout American history. In broader terms, epidemics can refer to a disease or other specific health-related behavior (e.g., smoking) with rates that are clearly above the expected occurrence in a community or region.
As you see, epidemics are not necessarily communicable diseases. For example, obesity or gun violence can be accurately described as epidemics. Epidemics can be large but also contained to a single area.
A pandemic is an epidemic that crosses borders.
The World Health Organization (WHO) declares a pandemic when a disease’s growth is exponential. This means growth rate skyrockets, and each day cases grow more than the day prior.
In being declared a pandemic, the virus has nothing to do with virology, population immunity, or disease severity. It means a virus covers a wide area, affecting several countries and populations.
Pandemics cause disruptions, economic losses and chaos.
What is a ‘twindemic’ and is that coming, too?
The Association of Health Care Journalists warned members:
Public health experts are even more worried than they were in 2020 about the possibility of a “twindemic” of both the delta variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and an influenza virus.
AHCJ member Bara Vaida writes that physicians are getting questions about whether the COVID-19 vaccine prevents seasonal flu. (It does not.) And Vaida writes that patients can get both vaccinations the same day, but probably not the same arm. Vaida also reminds us to note on our calendars that the “National Foundation for Infectious Diseases and the CDC will hold their annual flu briefing for the media on Oct. 7. Journalists can register here.”
The health minister of Trinidad and Tobago is not happy with Nicki Minaj
