This really highlights the critical design flaw of the World Bank's Pandemic Emergency Financing Facility (funded by the pandemic bonds). By the time the conditions are triggered and funds distributed, it's already way too late into the pandemic. These fund should be made much earlier and more should be diverted into proactive measures to maximise effectiveness.

That's kind of the purpose, if its standards were too low, it would be triggerred too many times that we won't have any of it left to do anything honestly. The World Bank's Program is always suppose to be an emergency backup we hope never to use instead of substitute for a proper government planning in times of pandemic.

That is word for word copy/paste from Wikipedia, not the WHO. What is the criteria the WHO uses to determine a pandemic?

Phase 6, the pandemic phase, is characterized by community level outbreaks in at least one other country [Italy|Iran] in a different WHO region [Europe|Eastern Mediterranean] in addition to Phase 5 that is characterized by human-to-human spread of the virus into at least two countries [China & South Korea] in one WHO region [Western Pacific]. No threshold of cases or deaths triggers the community level definition and is left to discretion of the WHO.

So the WHO has done everything right. It is the hallmark of professionalism to follow rules even under pressure. And the WHo is under a tremendous amount of pressure right now.

I have had trouble finding one as well (the parent comment).

I found this article which claims The WHO's use of the term is arbitrary based upon the conditions at hand.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/11/21156325/coronavirus-pand...

I suspect The WHO declared this a pandemic, based upon the article, out of concern for what they perceive to be insufficient government activity.

As I said there is probably no official WHO definition or criteria due to big economic impact of such declaration and it is decided on a case by case basis.

EDIT: I was wrong, here is the chart: https://www.who.int/influenza/resources/documents/pandemic_p...

Yes, it is. Parent never asked for WHO definition in the first place, I wonder if there is any at all, probably a commercial secret. Pandemic in WHO definition is when Director General of WHO declares it a pandemic, probably after confirming with member states who contribute, they were criticized in 2009 for declaring too early too, so criteria might have changed.

For reference, WHO's pandemic definition is phase 6 in this chart: https://www.who.int/influenza/resources/documents/pandemic_p...

that is, sustained community outbreaks in multiple WHO regions.

For someone like the WHO, you'll either be criticized for sounding the alarm for no reason or not sounding it fast enough.

This definition has too much room for subjectivity. It needs objective criteria. Or maybe WHO might need to have a numerical metric that says high large the impact of a virus or its associated disease is, just like the earthquake magnitude.

Yup; a month ago, they were saying it wouldn't be called a pandemic until it had (secondary) community transmission in a second country.

My reaction to this push alert today was "wait, they hadn't called it a pandemic yet??"

I believe India may even be of more concern than Africa. Of the two, India has the older aged population.

Wow, what is the source of this outrageous claim??

If anything, African states are going to be hit the hardest. South Africa for example, a country I am in, has the world's highest HIV cases. Pneumonia is a death sentence for HIV patients. Also, our infrastructure to manage a spike in infected arriving at state hospitals is abysmal. Right now, we sit with 7 infected (officially) but these are all index based with vectors from recent visits to Italy. If this changes to non-index based vectors, and this disease spreads to the townships, we are done for. If anything, COVID-19 is likely going to hammer Africa the hardest.

Or more likely, the poor of Africa who live in close, unsanitary conditions will be hit incredibly hard because their healthcare system cannot cope

By and large improved health care won't affect population resistance all that much, it just improves survival rate. In an earlier time you would have been right, European germs caused more Native American deaths than Europeans themselves when they first colonized, but nowadays with global trade we all end up sharing the same diseases for the most part.

Sedentary lifestyles enabled by modern lifestyles as opposed to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle can contribute to decreased overall health but thats not the issue here since almost nobody is a hunter-gatherer anymore.

When it comes to new viruses, all of us are in the same boat immunity-wise.

First of all "there is still natural selection" in literally all life, so I think you're meaning something else. But to what your point actually is, do you have any source on that?

I know several people that would have not been able to reach adulthood 100 years ago but have now reproduced and have passed on their diseases to their offspring. There is no doubt that natural selection in humans is much weaker now then in the past.

That's not what natural selection means... medical innovations are still natural selection factors. It doesn't stop, we just naturally figure out how to get better at it.

This was a bit of a poorly-considered comment.

To take you at your intent, all humans will be exposed to this virus with more or less the same chances of suffering. I imagine there may be pockets of resistance within certain gene pools, but it's a crap-shoot who and where.

I'm gussing that the downvotes are because of an implicit link to eugenics and racism.

those liking scifi: Asimov explored the idea in one of his novels. "Spacers" vs "Earthers" in the novel "The Caves of Steel"

This is uninformed speculation.

Why isn't Africa innately resistant to HIV then?