That leaves swine flu. According to this Wikipedia page about the 2009 flu pandemic (which is what the term “swine flu” references, as best as I can tell), worldwide fatalities are estimated at 575 thousand (upper bound) and worldwide infections are estimated at 700 million (lower bound). Given those numbers, the worst case fatality rate is 0.08%. Then there is this quote:
> A follow-up study done in September 2010 showed that the risk of serious illness resulting from the 2009 H1N1 flu was no higher than that of the yearly seasonal flu.
So my point remains: no one in the west had direct experience of a pandemic.
AIDS was not easily avoided. The blood supply was not screened early on. Many people early in the epidemic were infected from simple transfusions. Famous American tennis player Arthur Ashe contracted it and died in this manner.
It's not possible to screen for certain if someone has just acquired HIV, so to this day, they try to exclude people with risk factors from donating blood. Which then is treated as a human rights issue by some.
No, there are a series of screening questions that rule out high-risk donors (gay men, IV drug users, and travelers to high/risk areas are disqualified from donating). All blood is tested regardless.
If you are gay, they don't want you to donate blood. The problem is that if you are, say, at work and they do a blood drive and you say "I can't. Sorry." that potentially outs you to your coworkers that you are gay or have some other issue that disqualifies your blood.
In practice, they will let you donate and then mark it for destruction so you can hide the fact from your coworkers that you don't qualify. (Or they did at one time.)
This was a big issue in the US military during the "don't ask, don't tell" era where they would throw you out if they knew, but official policy was to encourage you to just remain closeted. Being outed as gay was career ending if you were career military at that time. Blood drives are common in the military. They had to have some mechanism to honor the "don't ask, don't tell" policy and let you keep hiding your sexual orientation.
"The problem is that if you are, say, at work and they do a blood drive and you say "I can't. Sorry." that potentially outs you to your coworkers that you are gay or have some other issue that disqualifies your blood."
I never heard about that as a concern, and I have to dismiss that as silly, given the many reasons why you can be disqualified. I mean, you could just have low iron or some other minor health issue.
What I was alluding to is that some people feel it is not acceptable or just to have a blanket exclusion of men who have sex with men. I can't imagine that your answers to the questionaire are allowed to be shared with anyone though.
I've never heard of anyone being offended by the exclusion of people who have spent time in Africa or Europe though.
It wouldn't be directly shared with your employer. But if everyone is there and you decline to participate in giving blood, it can point to information about you that you don't want people to know.
Whether you did or did not have some procedure done is definitely private medical information in Europe. There is no way for them to know whether I did or did not participate - maybe through the on site doctor if that is the one doing the procedure, but they're bound by very serious regulation to keep their mouths shut. Regardless, me not wanting to go would be a perfectly normal thing as well.
Blood donation tends to not be treated in the US as a medical procedure. It tends to be treated as a feel good community event. I'm a bit weirded out to have that reflected back to me as a medical procedure, though it certainly is. We don't quite seem to get that fact in some important way.
We're basically savages in huts over here about some things.
When I had a corporate job, lower level employees were instructed to keep their mouths shut and not tell everyone they were being promoted or whatever until it could be officially announced. Meanwhile, it was common for more than one middle manager type to drop by their cubicle to loudly congratulate them and make small talk, clearly trying to get in good with someone whose skills and such they might need.
I guess we were all supposed to be stupid or something and be incapable of inferring they had been promoted or something.
This was at a Fortune 500 company, so "the best of the best, sir." And it drove me crazy for so many reasons.
My mother is a German immigrant who came from a family of twelve kids. I am routinely shocked and appalled at how bad so many people are at thinking about the larger social landscape and how this will be viewed by others and what knock on effects it may have.
That type of thing seems to be shockingly common in the US and probably plays a large role in a lot of our social issues.
> A pandemic (from Greek πᾶν pan "all" and δῆμος demos "people") is a disease epidemic that has spread across a large region, for instance multiple continents, or worldwide.
> An epidemic (from Greek ἐπί epi "upon or above" and δῆμος demos "people") is the rapid spread of disease to a large number of people in a given population within a short period of time.
AIDS does not meet those definitions, unless you restrict “given population” to mean male homosexuals or recipients of blood transfusions.
AIDS cases have been to every country in the world which easily satisfies as a pandemic.
Epidemic is different with Covid19 not yet qualifying.
What’s useful about separating the ideas is discovering the root cause. Scurvy used to be epidemic among sailers, making it easier to find the root cause and treatments. Highly localized diseases generally have a specific local cause.
AIDS has not spread very rapidly. It has taken nearly 4 decades to reach its current spread. Covid has the potential to infect most people in the span of 12-18 months. It’s categorically different. And AIDS is easily avoided!
Rate of spread has nothing to do with the definition of pandemic. It took literally thousands of years for Smallpox to reach the America’s, but it achieved worldwide spread before eradication.
Malaria on the other hand has also killed hundreds of millions of people but as it’s a tropical disease with 93% of the cases occurring in Africa it’s not a pandemic.
Again person to person spread results in pandemics, making a definition based on geographic spread useful.
The definition of epidemic that I quoted above uses the word “rapid” and the phrase “short period of time”. The definition of pandemic requires there to be an epidemic. Those are not my invention, they are from Wikipedia!
Rapid as in a large number of cases a week, thus “within a short period of time.” Not rapid as in how long the disease existed.
The malaria epidemic is thousands of years old, nobody cares how quickly it spread 20 thousands years ago. Edit: Excluding academic intrest.
PS: And by Covid 19 not qualifying as an epidemic I meant it’s not an epidemic in every country. It however is an epidemic in several countries and will likely become an epidemic in most if not all country’s very quickly.
Malaria is not a tropical disease, although it's been eradicated in most tropical areas and not yet eradicated in most non-tropical areas.
The reason malaria is not a pandemic isn't the fact that it's been eradicated in some areas, but the fact that it's endemic. Only epidemic diseases can be pandemics; endemic disease (e.g. seasonal flu) cannot be. This is by definition.
Epidemics and pandemics relate to some change from the previous situation whereas endemic diseases refer to stability. This informs our policy responses.
I think you meant the reverse of what you said in the first paragraph. It’s true that Malaria (ague) cases occurred in Medival Europe as far north as England, but it was very much climate dependent. With massive differences between what became the Nordic countries vs say Italy. However, I have never heard a significant objection to calling it a tropical disease.
Even there, the spread has not been rapid or in a short period of time, which are both part of the definition of epidemic which I mentioned above. AIDS has taken decades to reach its current prevalence.
