I was under the impression that the Pandemic label was a response to objective criteria, not subjective decision of leadership.

In particular, one of those factors was sustained duration of the outbreak. My understanding is we finally crossed the time threshold for declaring this a Pandemic.

They also have to be careful about credibility. It wasn't clear how well the global containment efforts were going to work until very recently. Let's say a week or two ago there's a 33% probability of global pandemic: that means if they call it such then, 2 times out of 3 they're crying wolf and causing people to listen less carefully to the WHO. You already see people claiming all manner of conspiracy theory nonsense and not taking it as seriously as they should; they have to be careful not to amplify that, and balance that against acting too late when it's clear there is a high probability of global community spread.

Other than their censorship in China (they give different advice on their website served to China, even on English-language pages, involving the effectiveness of traditional Chinese medicine against the virus), I think they're doing a mostly okay job so far, from what I can see in the current reporting.

They were asked about this in their briefing a few days ago and made a multi-point response:

1) There are no objective criteria for calling something a pandemic.

2) They did not feel they knew enough about the propagation pattern to make the subjective call.

3) They were deeply worried that calling it a pandemic would switch government strategies from containment to mitigation, resulting in higher contagion and loss of life.

They especially emphasized the last point. The only question in my mind is whether (1) they decided containment was no longer viable or (2) they decided not calling it pandemic would be seen as unserious, even if containment could still potentially have benefits.

Source: https://youtu.be/OJQTM4QbTsg

The WHO's entire purpose is to act as health diplomats and coordinators. They have been ringing the alarm bell for weeks now, saying that countries need to take things seriously.

Whether the WHO uses the term "pandemic" is honestly just semantics. You should direct the majority of your criticism at short-sighted governments who have prioritized the economy (or, even worse, markets) over health.

It was incumbent on local authorities to take the WHO's message seriously, especially after their expedition to China released its report.

I think it's easy to criticize their leadership from the outside, but I would assume that they make their decisions with great care, and aren't going to throw around "pandemic" or other words easily. If they do that, people stop listening.

It's akin to people not caring about a major hurricane barreling towards them because they've heard the doomsday scenarios before and nothing has happened.

They have to be careful, and that they were.

Declaring pandemic requires data which the WHO simply can't have if its member states do not submit or further, do not test for it. People like to think that international organizations like the UN, WTO, WHO is somewhat superior, or above the states, but they are not.

> By delaying the "pandemic" designation, the WHO has inadvertently cost more lives.

... why?

I mean, it's not like the word of the WHO is a binding thing, where anyone is mandated to take action on any level because of a binary designation in a taxonomy. This whole this is just bureaucratic wheels turning; everyone who needs to take action has all the information they need to do so.

This is just the WHO doing what it does best -- having committees meeting endlessly to decide whether to apply a certain meaningless designation and then announcing the conclusion of that exercise.

Their actual job, of collating and disseminating information and trying to coordinate any large-scale responses, is actually hard, so nobody wants to do it, but having a meeting to decide IS IT A PANDEMIC is an easy bikeshedding meeting that all the MBAs and ex-McKinsey people can attend and offer their stupid opinion on what the definition of a word is.

EDIT: I said "everyone who needs to take action has all the information they need to do so", and that could be interpreted as saying that we know enough to determine what actions to take. But what I mean is that we have enough data to start to make a range of predictions and bound the uncertainty to some degree; having a more precise metric for any aspect of COVID-19 should not affect the response since those metrics are essentially made up and not comparable even on a per-hospital level, much less a per-country level or even a per-test-kit-type level. Uncertainty is part of the game here, and understanding the risk profiles is how people and organizations and governments have to tune their response.

If it is a political and subjective decision as you say, then they have to balance the benefits of the declaration against the risk of the counter-narrative overwhelming it. Too early and even more people would dismiss the problem than are doing so now. And there's no "we said 'pandemic' before, well, it's 'really a pandemic' now" label that can be used.

And leaving aside the immediate difficulties...let's save this kind of retrospective criticism for after, when we're closer to being out of the woods.

If you have prospective criticism -- what should be done now and going forwards -- that would be worthwhile.

But months ago they really couldn’t have known. We still don’t know how many will be infected. All we can do is take precautionary measures. The WHO messaging should have been stronger and earlier, but it isn’t their fault for not labeling a pandemic months ago. Granted, there was enough data and research done to squarely label this as a pandemic, and that’s really where I assign blame on them.

Here is a neat video that helps put things in perspective for most any viewer. https://youtu.be/Kas0tIxDvrg

As a layperson, I'm not sure I agree with your layperson perception analysis. To me, calling it an epidemic meant that efforts should be focused on containment in order to slow it down or stop its progression. That signaled just how dangerous it was. Calling it a pandemic essentially means that we've given up on that and just like the common flu, most people will catch it. Basically, it's time to just "deal with" it instead of attempting to contain. I'd rather they had kept the epidemic label a bit longer.

I believe it was declared a PHEIC - Public Health Emergency of International Concern - and this should be the signal that governments need to take measures for containment to prevent it from spreading.

I believe the pandemic label is when containment has failed and governments need to go into mitigation mode. Seeing as it had been relatively contained in China, South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, etc., it seemed reasonable that taking measures would be sufficient to prevent further escalation.

The WHO defines a pandemic as the worldwide spread of a disease[1]. So the disease only becomes a pandemic after it has spread everywhere; it wouldn't make sense to call a disease a pandemic before it becomes one.

[1]https://www.who.int/csr/disease/swineflu/frequently_asked_qu...

"If the role of the WHO is to stave off pandemics and not just to monitor them". Not really no.

But would political leaders actual take actions regardless of the pandemic categorization? I hope they do, but the reality starts to frighten me.

The delayed message of the WHO was really more like a very slow reaction at the cost of potentially millions infected with several thousands dead. By the time it spread to Europe and the US, it was essentially game over.

Perhaps the 'doomsday clock' was right all along but didn't see this one coming.

For the most part, the only place I've seen people saying "this is just the flu" is on the internet, and especially in tech-heavy circles.

The only mass media where I've seen that was in a BBC television report from a soccer stadium, and that was only last night.

What country are you in? Both the media and government in my country (US) have been sending the exact opposite message of "just the flu". As with anywhere, there are a few local outlets and politicians trying to downplay it, likely for economic reasons, but I haven't seen it downplayed on the Federal level at all. In fact, there's been an overabundance of information and caution.

I suppose that depends on your local feeds; if you are in NA you probably have a hard time getting correct information/governance/leadership at this time. (hence your question) It used to be 'good enough' or even 'fine' over there, i.e. with HIV or malaria issues or even H1N1.

But even with the research on pandemic readiness showing that neither capacity nor governance has been up to the task people are still pretending it's just a political choice and the results will be fine. If I remember correctly it as CSIS thing: https://healthsecurity.csis.org/final-report/

From the death %, symptoms, and recovery stats, it really is mostly "just the flu".

If you are otherwise healthy, this is like getting a cold with a fever for a week, then feeling better.

Sure, call it a pandemic, because it is worldwide. But honestly it's just not that remarkable. This isn't some godly virus with 25% death rates!