What is a severe influenza pandemic?
What makes a pandemic severe, as opposed to mild or moderate, is the rate of deaths and other serious complications from the disease. The more people die or develop serious complications, the more severe it is. Severe pandemic influenza occurs on a scale that distinguishes it from other public health disasters in terms of its global nature and duration. It is experienced over years, not days, weeks or months, and threatens core public health, social and economic infrastructures. Unlike a mild pandemic, a severe pandemic has the potential to disrupt normal health care and business operations and therefore interfere with the distribution of essential goods and services globally. Unlike other disasters, states and communities cannot count on receiving federal assistance in a severe pandemic. For purposes of this project, we assumed that a severe pandemic could resemble the one that occurred in 1918–19.
