Infection control specialist says WHO is dragging its feet on calling COVID-19 a pandemic

All of us who are looking at this very carefully, you know, we're not surprised that WH Gio hasn't declared it, not because we don't think it's a

pandemic

, because actually I think most of us think it is, but it's fairer . The WHO was a very, very political organization and is very afraid of that kind of terminology. The advantage of

calling

it a

pandemic

is that we stop playing this game of worrying about country A and country B a little bit and start worrying about the world because every day by day who we should evaluate is really a moving target and the list continues to grow day by day,

calling

this a pandemic would make it a little easier for us to understand the fact that this is a global problem.

The key is I just want everyone to understand what we're dealing with when you say it's a pandemic. The last time one was declared was in 2009 if I'm not mistaken h1n1 yeah what exactly is a pandemic? A pandemic is basically the spread of a new pathogen that is engulfing the world and h1n1 was definitely a pandemic, but people often associate that it has to be a very deadly disease to be a pandemic too and that's not really part of it. of the definition, the definition is just a new disease. which is spreading around the world and is not being

control

led but it got a little warmed up by h1n1 because it wasn't as deadly so the world got scared and in the end it was actually not as deadly as the seasonal flu normal that this virus is. very different story than h1n1, but you know, I guess they're a little worried because they don't want to get out the door too quickly, but what they're actually doing is shuffling, shuffling in. this case is not that interesting and in the meantime the cases are increasing, the number of deaths is increasing and there is no concerted global response, so I have questions because the whole spectrum of declaring a pandemic has countries in the United States, we heard from the officials of the CDC, we heard the Minister of Health and the medical officer of Health yesterday talked about Canada needs maybe a new mindset mentally prepared and prepared in a different way if it's a pandemic, what will really change?

What we have to change is to try. You know, moving from trying to prevent this virus from getting a foothold here to recognizing that as more and more countries have cases, it will be almost impossible for us to prevent this virus from gaining a foothold here and starting to spread in the community, etc. you know the messaging needs to change everything is under

control

as well, we need to be prepared for the fact that we could have local transmission in Canada and all of that means, in terms of people getting sick, people not being able to come to work, increased demand Hospitals, Public Health, take measures like stopping large gatherings, closing schools, things that we have been seeing in many other countries until now, until now we have been spectators, but at this point one must assume that it is very likely that We're also going to get into those scenarios here, so we need to make that mental shift to think about keeping the kids out of school and maybe staying and working from home instead of going to the office.

These may be things we need. To contemplate, we had a question from Brian. One of our viewers may be wondering at this very point whether, given what seems imminent, he should start stocking up on non-perishable goods and supplies in case he has to be home for two weeks. Is it that reasonable? A word of advice at this point, well, you certainly know people who have been stuck in home isolation, that's something that comes up immediately, right, how do I go to the supermarket? So I think you know some thinking along that line of you just don't know. not just relying on daily replenishment of everything which may not be a bad idea, we're not there yet in Canada, but I think getting that mental space back there over the next few weeks will probably be a helpful thing for people. should do because it's very different from what we normally do a couple of questions just about preventing and protecting transmission Deborah Shea wonders if the flu vaccine will help protect her from coronavirus yes, they are very different viruses so The flu vaccine does not protect against coronavirus at all.

The advantage of getting a flu shot is that this year's fight was pretty good against the flu, so it largely prevents people from getting the flu, which is part of the background noise of all this that when people get vaccine. If you get sick with a cough and fever and feel fine, if you have had a flu shot, it is less likely that it is actually the flu and in the coming weeks you may be more likely to need to get checked for the corona virus Eminem writing yes a patient recovers from Co vid 19 how long is he immune or I would add if he is immune or can someone be reinfected yes we don't know we actually don't know the answer to that yet I mean right now this virus seems to be very very stable, so there's no reason to assume that we won't develop at least partial immunity to this, but all that information will have to be pretty far in the future so we can I'll be doing illogical ladder studies and that sort of thing by checking the blood of people to see if they have antibodies against the virus that's coming in the next few months, but right now that's a reasonable assumption is that you would think that people once they've had this would be less likely to get it again.

A couple of questions about travel and quarantine are obviously on people's minds, so this is from Jackie, who is an employer. Should employers ask anyone who has recently traveled to an outbreak area to self-isolate for 14 days? the sensible decision and we had a similar question from someone whose nanny recently traveled to Taiwan and has been home for 14 days, but is it safe for her to return to work and work with children? What's up with that? If I. I get that question 50 times a day right now and yeah, and the answer I would say is that in the beginning it was pretty easy for people to say, "Okay, if you've been to Wuhan, you know you shouldn't come to work." for 14 days, etc., all of that is starting to disappear because now there are so many countries that are reporting cases and remember that when a country like Brazil reports a case, there is a reasonable chance that it has more cases than it just doesn't have.

I still found them okay, so the idea of ​​people staying home is starting to become more and more impossible when you're talking about traveling to multiple parts of the world now, so you have to balance it, if you quarantine everyone those who have traveled, you could end up not doing so. having employees, in fact, these are going to be difficult decisions as you bring this up, these are the things that are going to come to the forefront, yes, these are things that come up in hospitals every hour, now people are asking that question and a couple of other travel-related questions, one each Amanda, the mother,

says

she is traveling to Panama with a toddler and a six-month-old, so how can she protect her babies?

What would she suggest there or, if necessary, any action to take? Yeah, what's really interesting is this virus, all the reports. What we've heard so far is that while children can certainly get infected with this virus, they don't seem to get very sick from this virus compared to older adults, so it's possible that this is more the case, which is why these children are getting infected. but they are not that sick, but then they pass it on to their parents who may be getting sick. You know, there's no easy way to protect young children just because they don't.

In reality, they do not comply with everything. -washing things and that kind of stuff so it's hard to travel with kids on the brink of a pandemic no doubt I want to end with just a couple of questions this is based on questions from one of our viewers about whether the virus can't grow when it's hot outside, so in summer there will be no corona virus. I think it's a reference to something we heard from the president of the US saying that in the summer we'll be fine and we just heard comments. Again yesterday, Donald Trump said, "You know, in America, we're getting through this easily" and he also said there's a vaccine imminent, so there's essentially nothing to see here, meanwhile, his own government officials They warn that it is not a question of if and when and suggest again. the same precautions he's taking, I wonder how worried he knows that people listen to Donald Trump and accept what he

says

he is the president of the United States and I find it worrying when he says things that are indirectly opposite to what his own health officials are saying that yes, there is nothing to support anything you just said is actually true, so first of all, the point that coronaviruses will not spread in the summer when it is hot and humid , right now it is 30 degrees Celsius.

It's humid and fine in Singapore, thank you very much, so there's no reason to suspect that in the summer this will go away when a new virus appears that people don't have, you know? h1n1 in 2009, our h1n1 outbreak was during the summer, so I think that's all rubbish and I think the idea that we are protected by this is frankly ridiculous, they say they already have many more cases than Canada and It's one of the world's top travel destinations. They are going to have extended communities. There's really no doubt about it, which is why his comments are remarkably unhelpful.

Obviously he has political reasons for wanting to downplay it, but it definitely is. I'm going to turn around and fight them.