Don't understand this. We have seen sustained H2H transmission outside of China. In multiple countries. cnn.com/asia/live-news…
In 2009, @WHO was criticized for having too many pandemic phases. We were well into pandemic when phase changed, which made it seem like risk increased. Really, only change was more WHO regions were involved. That had organizational impacts, but not too meaningful for public
Yes, "pandemic" is scary for those who think it is a measure of severity not geographic spread. But let's not assume we can't explain what "pandemic" means.
A key reason we need to acknowledge that we are seeing sustained transmission outside of China is so that countries can orient their response plans appropriately.
Continuing to focus on containment at national borders by testing only travel from China is becoming less relevant.
Meanwhile, countries, including US, are putting insufficient resources into planning how to mitigate the impacts of the virus once it is inevitably found to be circulating within borders. Public health officials are consumed with containment activities.
We can't continue to divert resources from the real public health need, which is to figure out how to best protect those that we think will experience severe disease (e.g., elderly, comorbidities). We need to ready health systems to manage a surge of critically ill patients.
