3 upvotes, 1 direct replies (showing 1)
[deleted]
Comment by audioalt8 at 04/04/2020 at 10:19 UTC
2 upvotes, 0 direct replies
This is what I understand also. WHO operates independently and is trying to be robust when defining the spread of the disease. COVID-19 was already an epidemic, it was declared a pandemic once it spread across continents. This was declared once the virus really began to take off in Italy and Iran.
It doesn't seem to me that they witheld declaring a pandemic. They are balancing a fine line when triggering global panic and it required a sufficient amount of spread, like the Swine flu pandemic did when it spread across the world.
When the 2002 SARS outbreak occurred, that was confined to Asia and they continued to classify that as an epidemic and it remained that way throughout. There has probably been better monitoring and updates of this virus than any viral pandemic in history. I think people are conflicting their imaginations against the reality of dealing with such difficult real world situations.