- The new coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2,
and the disease it causes, COVID-19,
is spreading across the globe.
And as more cases appear outside of Asia,
you're probably starting to hear the word 'pandemic.'
- The risk of a global pandemic is very much upon us.
- [Reporter] Global pandemic.
- Could become a pandemic.
- [Reporter] With the potential to become a pandemic.
- Let's unpack what that word actually means
and how you can protect yourself going forward.
[light ambient music]
So, what is a pandemic?
Simply put, a pandemic is a disease that spreads globally,
crossing international boundaries
and affecting a large number of people.
To put that in context,
here are a few other helpful definitions.
So, firstly, we have this definition of an endemic disease.
That means a disease that's occurring
at a steady, predictable rate.
Then you have outbreak, which means a disease
that's spreading well above and beyond endemic levels.
An epidemic, on the other hand,
is an outbreak that's spread to a large geographical area.
Keep in mind that one disease can change status over time.
Now, going back to the P-word,
the classical definition of a pandemic
doesn't say anything at all about disease severity.
It's really all focused on geographic scale.
So far, the World Health Organization
hasn't referred to this as a pandemic--
- Our message continues to be
that this virus has pandemic potential.
- Although many epidemiologists,
myself included, are treating it as one.
The spread of this new virus, SARS-CoV-2,
is likely past the point of containment,
and that's the first thing you try to do
with a potential pandemic.
It's what China was trying to do with massive quarantines,
the likes of which we've never seen before.
But once you're past that point of containment,
you need to quickly pivot to another focus.
Instead of trying to stop a disease
that's already spread to many different countries,
you need to focus on slowing the spread of infection.
To do this, you have to properly isolate
people who are infected
and try and quickly develop treatments and vaccines.
It looks at least so far with this new virus
that the death rate is a lot lower
than other severe coronaviruses.
That doesn't mean many people haven't died.
We've seen thousands of deaths.
But the overall death rate is closer to around 3%
for this new virus,
whereas the death rate for SARS was around 10%,
and for MERS the death rate was over 30%.
Now, just because this new virus
doesn't seem to have as high a death rate,
it doesn't mean that we shouldn't have a plan.
So, how do we protect ourselves right now?
I know this sounds really pedestrian,
but trust me, one of the best pieces of advice
is to wash your hands with soap and water regularly,
have good cough hygiene, so cough into your elbow,
cough into a tissue and then throw it away,
and also get your flu shot.
I know people are kinda over
hearing about the flu at this point, but the reason I say it
is that if you get sick with the flu,
it massive increases your risk
of getting a second respiratory infection
like the new coronavirus.
Also, you can practice what's known as social distancing.
That means simply limiting your exposure to other people
by working at home, for example,
or if you're in public, maintaining a distance
of three to six feet between you and others.
I'm getting a ton of questions about masks, understandably.
So, here's what you need to know.
You need to wear a mask
if you have symptoms of respiratory disease,
symptoms like coughing,
or if you're looking after people who are sick
and have those symptoms.
You also need to know how to properly use a mask
and be aware of things like once a mask is moist,
it's not as effective and needs to be replaced.
Wearing a mask without full knowledge
of when and how to wear it can be dangerous
because it gives people a false sense of security
about how protected they really are.
If you do need a mask,
health authorities recommend a regular surgical mask
because that prevents droplets from other people
coming into contact with your mouth and nose.
And if you have symptoms,
it prevents those droplets from you reaching others.
An N95 mask is recommended for healthcare workers
caring for sick people when they're doing procedures
that bring more fluid up from inside a person's lungs.
That's more dangerous,
so that's why an N95 mask is recommended.
Bear in mind that with masks, it's not one-size-fits-all.
You wanna make sure that a mask you're wearing
really is right for you and really is working.
One way to do this, ideally you get fit-tested,
but also when you put an N95 mask on,
you can do a seal test where you breathe hard
and you feel to see whether any air
is escaping around it or not.
A question I get asked a lot
is should you wear a mask if you don't have any symptoms
just to be really, really safe.
The answer I normally give is no
because if you wear a mask unnecessarily
or you stock up on a ton of them,
you're just contributing to the mask shortages
that we're already seeing
and taking away resources from people who truly need them.
So, for now, take advice
from what your local health officials are saying.
I think what history tells us
is that pandemics are inevitable and to be expected,
and that's why we really need
solid pandemic preparedness plans at national levels
and also at family and community levels.
To understand just what pandemics are capable of,
let's look at a few examples from human history,
starting with perhaps the most infamous pandemic,
the Black Death or the bubonic plague.
Now, this pandemic got its name from its symptoms,
specifically lymph nodes that became blackened and swollen
after bacteria entered through the skin.
Lovely, I know.
Now, this isn't the first pandemic, by any means,
but it's certainly one of the deadliest.
It lasted from around 1346 to 1353
and resulted in the deaths
of somewhere between 75 million people
up to 200 million people.
It's mostly associated with Europe,
but it's thought to have originated in Asia
and then spread across that continent,
as well as possibly Africa.
There are a few theories
about how the disease spread to humans.
Some scientists say it could've spread to us
directly from rats.
Others say there's some evidence
that it was actually spread by fleas that lived on gerbils.
Let's fast-forward to 1918,
and here we run into the Spanish Flu pandemic,
which infected one in three humans alive at the time
and killed about 50 million globally.
It's only called Spanish
because Spain was not involved in World War I
and it was neutral.
Therefore, it did not have news censorship.
So, when this outbreak arrived in Spain,
that's when it got press coverage,
whereas in France and other countries
it was not mentioned in newspapers at all.
The Spanish Flu killed really quickly.
There were approximately 25 million deaths
in just the first five or six months.
Part of the reason for that though
probably had to do a lot with poor living conditions
at the time and the fact that flu makes you susceptible
for other infections like bacterial chest infections,
and back then there were no antibiotics.
And unlike what we're seeing today,
where it seems that older people
are more vulnerable to death from COVID-19,
at least based on preliminary data,
Spanish Flu was different.
It was wiping out young and healthy adults.
Then there's the HIV/AIDS pandemic.
HIV quickly spread from Central and Western Africa
to every continent on the planet in the early-1980s
and it's killed more than 30 million people
around the world.
It's also the first pandemic
for which there's been global activism
and the very rapid development of treatments.
It went through the whole spectrum,
from being an outbreak to an epidemic to a pandemic,
and now many people say we can call HIV endemic
in some parts of the world.
Thanks to advances in medical technology
and the AIDS activists,
HIV should be a chronic manageable condition
that you live with your whole life,
although ideally we'd have a vaccine and a cure for HIV.
Next, we have the SARS pandemic,
which went from 2002 to 2003
and was also caused by a coronavirus.
Remember, that's a whole family of viruses,
including four coronaviruses that cause the common cold,
as well as this new coronavirus that causes COVID-19.
SARS likely jumped from civet cats to humans in China
and then spread to other parts of the world.
Back in 2002, Chinese officials had a delay
in sharing data about SARS.
And in the response, the World Health Organization
updated the international health regulations,
basically to compel all 194 member-states
to get their act together and meet specific standards
for detecting, reporting, and responding to outbreaks.
These new plans for a more coordinated global response
to pandemics came into effect
with the 2009 Swine Flu pandemic,
which was caused by a new H1N1 flu virus
and killed between 150,000 to around half-a-million people.
It spread really widely.
It was seen in both Northern and Southern Hemispheres
between April and September of 2009,
which means it also spread
outside of the normal flu seasons.
We've learned from previous pandemics
that people can either day from the disease at hand
or develop immunity to that disease.
And that means that as the disease continues to circulate,
it won't have that same devastating impact
that it did the first time around.
One example of this is the H1N1 virus
that caused the 2009 flu pandemic.
That virus is now a common flu virus
that circulates worldwide, but it doesn't cause a pandemic.
So, how does a pandemic end?
Virologists estimate that this new virus
will likely stay in China
and continue to seed other countries and the world
until maybe it just becomes as common
as the other four coronaviruses
that cause the mild common cold.
Some people are even starting to call it
the fifth coronavirus, so maybe that will be its story.
It goes from COVID-19, which caused this terrible situation,
to the fifth regular coronavirus causing the cold.
Some virologists even predict
that maybe 40% to 70% of adults around the world
will become infected with the new virus
before this is all over.
But many scientists still say
the vast majority of those who become infected
are more likely to have a milder version of the disease.
What we have on our side versus those poor people
facing the Black Death, for example,
is we have the capacity to more quickly develop
treatments and vaccines.
A COVID-19 vaccine candidate could be ready
for early phases of safety testing in April.
And if that goes well, testing could begin
to see if the vaccine actually prevents disease
by the late summer.
But, reality check,
it would still be 18 months at least after that
that any vaccine would probably be available.
So, yes, you'll be hearing the P-word a lot,
but remember, definitions of pandemic
focus on geographic spread
and do not focus on severity of a disease.