The risk of a global pandemic is very much upon us.

Global pandemic could become a pandemic with the potential to become a pandemic.

Let's unpack what that word actually means and how you can protect yourself going forward.

So what is a pandemic?

Simply put a pandemic is a disease that spreads globally, crossing international boundaries and affecting a large number of people.

To put that in context.

Here are a few other helpful definitions.

So firstly we have this definition of an endemic disease.

That means a disease that's occurring at a steady, predictable rate.

Then you have outbreak which means a disease that's spreading well above and beyond endemic levels.

An epidemic, on the other hand, is an outbreak that spread to a large geographical area.

Keep in mind that one disease can change status over time.

Now going back to the p word, the classical definition of a pandemic doesn't say anything at all about disease severity.

It's really all focused on geographic scale.

So far, the World Health Organization hasn't referred to this as a pandemic.

Our message continues to be that this virus has pandemic potential, although many epidemiologists myself included are treating it as one.

The spread of this new virus, Sars-Cov-2 is likely past the point of containment and that's the first thing you tried to do with a potential pandemic.

It's what China was trying to do with massive quarantines, the likes of which we've never seen before.

But once you're past that point of containment, you need to quickly pivot to another focus.

Instead of trying to stop a disease, it's already spread to many different countries, you need to focus on slowing the spread of infection.

To do this, you have to properly isolate people who are infected and try and quickly develop treatments and vaccines.

It looks like at least so far with this new virus, that the death rate is a lot lower than other severe coronavirus is that doesn't mean many people haven't died.

We've seen thousands of deaths, but the overall death rate is closer to around three for this new virus, Whereas the death rate for SARS was around 10 and farmers, the death rate was over 30 now, just because this new virus doesn't seem to have as high a death rate, it doesn't mean that we shouldn't have a plan.

So how do we protect ourselves right now?

I know this sounds really pedestrian, but trust me, one of the best pieces of advice is to wash your hands with soap and water regularly.

Have good cough hygiene to like cough into your elbow, cough into a tissue and then throw it away and also get your flu shot.

I know people are kind of like overhearing about the flu at this point, but the reason I say it is that if you get sick with the flu, it massively increases your risk of getting a second respiratory infection, like the new coronavirus, also, you can practice what's known as social distancing.

That means simply limiting your exposure to other people by working at home.

For example, or if you're in public maintaining a distance of 3-6 ft between you and others, I'm getting a ton of questions about masks, understandably.

So here's what you need to know.

You need to wear a mask.

If you have symptoms of respiratory disease symptoms like coughing or if you're looking after people who are sick and have those symptoms, you also need to know how to properly use a mask and be aware of things like once a mask is moist, It's not as effective and needs to be replaced wearing a mask without full knowledge of when and how to where It can be dangerous because it gives people a false sense of security about how protective they really are.

If you do need a mask, health authorities recommend a regular surgical mask because that prevents droplets from other people coming into contact with your mouth and nose.

And if you have symptoms, it prevents those droplets from you reaching others.

An N 95 mask is recommended for healthcare workers caring for sick people when they're doing procedures that bring more fluid up from inside a person's lungs, that's more dangerous.

So that's why an N 95 mask is recommended.

Bear in mind that with masks, it's not one size fits all you want to make sure that a mask you're wearing really is right for you and really is working One way to do this ideally, you get fit tested.

But also when you put an N 95 mask on, you can do a seal test where you breathe hard and you feel to see whether any air is escaping around it or not.

A question I get asked a lot is should you wear a mask?

If you don't have any symptoms, like just to be really, really safe.

The answer I normally give is no, because if you wear a mask unnecessarily or you stock up on a ton of them, you're just contributing to the mask shortages that we're already seeing and taking away resources from people who truly need them.

So for now, take advice from what your local health officials are saying.

I think what history tells us is that pandemics are inevitable and to be expected and that's really why we need solid pandemic preparedness plans at national levels and also at family and community levels.

To understand just what pandemics are capable of.

Let's look at a few examples from human history, starting with perhaps the most infamous pandemic, The Black Death or the bubonic plague.

Now this pandemic got its name from its symptoms specifically lymph nodes that became blackened and swollen after bacteria entered through the skin.

Lovely.

I know now this isn't the first pandemic by any means, but it's certainly one of the deadliest.

It lasted from around 1346 to 1353 and resulted in the deaths of somewhere between 75 million people Up to 200 million people.

It's mostly associated with Europe, but it's thought to have originated in Asia and then spread across that continent as well as possibly Africa there are a few theories about how the disease spread to humans.

Some scientists say could have spread towards directly from rats.

Others say there's some evidence that it was actually spread by fleas that lived on gerbils.

Let's fast forward to 1918 and here we run into the Spanish flu pandemic, which infected one in three humans alive at the time and killed about 50 million globally.

It's only called Spanish because Spain was not involved in World War and it was neutral.

Therefore, it did not have new censorship.

So when this outbreak arrived in Spain, that's when it got press coverage.

Whereas in France and other countries, it was not mentioned in newspapers at all, the Spanish flu killed really quickly.

There were approximately 25 million deaths in just the first five or six months.

Part of the reason for that, though, probably had to do a lot with poor living conditions at the time and the fact that flu makes you susceptible for other infections, like bacterial chest infections.

And back then, there were no antibiotics.

And unlike what we're seeing today, where it seems that older people are more vulnerable to death.

From COVID-19 at least based on preliminary data, spanish flu was different.

It was wiping out young and healthy adults.

Then there's the HIV AIDS pandemic.

HIV quickly spread from central and Western africa to every continent on the planet in the early 19 eighties and it's killed more than 30 million people around the world.

It's also the first pandemic for which there's been global activism and the very rapid development of treatments.

It went through the whole spectrum from being an outbreak to an epidemic to a pandemic.

And now many people say we can call HIV endemic in some parts of the world.

Thanks to advances in medical technology and the AIDS activists, HIV should be a chronic, manageable condition that you live with your whole life.

Although ideally we'd have a vaccine and a cure for HIV.

Next we have the SARS pandemic which went from 2000 and 2 to 2003 and was also caused by coronavirus.

Remember that's a whole family of viruses, including for corona viruses that cause the common cold, as well as this new coronavirus that causes covid 19 SARS likely jumped from civic cats to humans in china and then spread to other parts of the world.

Back in 2000 and two, chinese officials had a delay in sharing data about SARS and in response, the World Health Organization updated the International Health Regulations basically to compel all 190 for member states to get their act together and meet specific standards for detecting, reporting and responding to outbreaks.

These new plans for a more coordinated global response to pandemics came into effect with the 2009 swine flu pandemic, Which was caused by a new H1N1 flu virus and killed between 150,000 to around half a million people.

It spread really widely.

It was seen in both northern and southern hemispheres between April and September of 2009, which means it also spread outside of the normal flu seasons.

We've learned from previous pandemics that people can either die from the disease at hand or develop immunity to that disease and that means that as the disease continues to circulate, it won't have that same devastating impact that it did.

The first time round one example of this is the H1N1 virus that caused the 2009 flu pandemic.

That virus is now a common flu virus that circulates worldwide, but it doesn't cause a pandemic.

So how does a pandemic end?

Virologists estimate that this new virus will likely stay in china and continue to seed other countries in the world until maybe it just becomes as common as the other four corona viruses that caused the mild, common cold.

Some people are even starting to call it the fifth coronavirus.

So maybe that will be it story.

It goes from COVID-19 which causes terrible situation to the fifth regular coronavirus causing the cold.

Some virologists even predict that maybe 40-70 of adults around the world will become infected with the new virus before this is all over.

But many scientists still say the vast majority of those who become infected are more likely to have a milder version of the disease, What we have on our side versus those poor people facing the black death.

For example, is we have the capacity to more quickly develop treatments and vaccines.

A COVID-19 vaccine candidate could be ready for early phases of safety testing in April and if that goes while testing, could begin to see if the vaccine actually prevents disease by the late summer.

But reality check, it would still be 18 months, at least after that, that any vaccine will probably be available.

So yes, you'll be hearing the P word a lot.

But remember definitions of pandemic, focus on geographic spread and do not focus on severity of the disease.