Why is bird flu a pandemic and not an epidemic?

[lilibet]

Just wondered

The same but bigger, I think.

And it sounds more scary in the media.

Looked it up....

"Epidemic = Spreading rapidly and extensively by infection and affecting many individuals in an area or a population at the same time"

"Pandemic = Epidemic over a wide geographic area and affecting a large proportion of the population"

So yup, bigger

Because of it is spreading internationally, I think.

I think that the media are blowing the whole avian flu totally out of proportion!

I have been watching the news over the last few days, and it has gone from "remote chance of bird flu even reaching birds in the UK" to "oh my god, 50 0000000 are going to die in Britain".

ah yes the Daily Mail again!

and Sky News! Drives me mad.

But we live in Budapest which is closer to Romania than you guys so I prob should be worried! Or should I?

Yup basically bigger. An epidemic woulb considered national and a pandemic international.

would be... jeez!

I read the 50000, but then they went on to point out that 10,000 die each year of normal flu (which seems a lot more than I would have expected... did I misread?), but it makes the whole 50000 seem smaller somehow...

At the end of the day (as far as I know), there is sod all we can do personally about it (unless you have a job stockpiling the vaccine stuff), so worrying isn't going to do anyone any good.

Keep healthy, and hope for the best.

Maybe I just don't worry enough....

Flamebat thats how I'm looking at it too. Also yes its a lot of people to die but in the UK we have good meidcal treatment, hygiene, food, housing etc so everything is in our favour. Of course thats not true for everyone and those people will be the ones to make up that 50,000 - its will be people who are already weakened by illness, people on the streets, elderly people etc. That said I did read that one of the previous outbreaks affected people in their 20-40s so that is more scary. But I do think we need to keep things in perspective and I do think the media are having a field day with this.

So what can we do to protect ourselves?

LC - To my mind we just do the same as we do to try and protect ourselves from everything else. Try to live as healthily as possible.

Noone replied to me

Flame bat, a statistic that has been calmin me down a lot, once I sat and thought about it. Dying from a super strenth mutated flu virus (if one happens and if it is at the very worst end of the scale in nastyness) is 10% less likely than a man's risk of getting testicular cancer.

Hands up everyone who is currently panicing about their dh getting testicular cancer???

No-one? Thought not! ps my dh did get tc btc!!! )

Yay! That makes me feel like I wasn't just being bad and flippant for not panicking enough

Not yay for dh with tc obviously...