How Changing the Definition of Pandemic Altered Our World by Dr. Joseph Mercola for Mercola
Mid-March 2020 predictions said COVID-19 would kill 2.2 million Americans if allowed to run its course.1 By the end of March, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, downgraded the projected death toll, saying we were probably looking at 100,000 to 240,000 Americans dying.2
April 8, 2020, a new model referred to as the Murray Model3 downgraded the threat further, predicting COVID-19 will kill 60,000 in the U.S. by August 20204 — a number that is still 20,000 lower than the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s death toll numbers attributed to the seasonal flu the winter of 2017/2018.5
Now, nine months into the pandemic, mortality statistics clearly show the truth: The COVID-19 pandemic is a pandemic in name only. In reality, there’s no excess mortality,6,7,8 and had it not been for the World Health Organization changing the definition of “pandemic,” COVID-19 would no longer be an issue.
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I know some will balk at the concept of no excess mortality but the truth is the truth, and when you examine the existing numbers, that is what you find. If you integrate the U.S. Centers for Disease and Prevention’s comments that 94% of those who died had comorbidities, which could easily be the real cause of the reported “COVID-19 deaths,” it then becomes obvious that the numbers were highly inflated.
Definition of Pandemic Substantially Altered
The WHO’s original definition of a pandemic was:9,10
“… when a new influenza virus appears against which the human population has no immunity, resulting in several, simultaneous epidemics worldwide with enormous numbers of deaths and illness.”
The key portion of that definition is “enormous numbers of deaths and illness.” This definition was changed in the month leading up to the 2009 swine flu pandemic. The change was a simple but substantial one: They merely removed the severity and high mortality criteria, leaving the definition of a pandemic as “a worldwide epidemic of a disease.”11
This switch in definition allowed the WHO to declare swine flu a pandemic after a mere 144 people had died from the infection, worldwide, and it’s why COVID-19 is still promoted as a pandemic even though it has caused no excess mortality in nine months.12,13,14
We now have plenty of data showing the lethality of COVID-19 is on par with the seasonal flu.15,16,17,18,19 It may be different in terms of symptoms and complications, but the actual lethality is about the same. The absolute risk of death is equivalent to the risk of dying in a car accident.20,21
