[Dylan16807]

Wide geographic area, yes. Significant proportion of the population, yes. Very widespread growth or extent, yes (specifically the extent option).

How does it not fit the dictionary definition of pandemic?

[pc86]

https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#datatracker-home

17,310 admissions, down 10.3% week over week

2.1% of deaths, down 8.7% WOW

1.5% of ED visits, down 14.6% WOW

7.4% of tests are positive, down 0.9% WOW

None of those numbers indicate growth. None of those numbers indicate a significant proportion of the population. I'll give you geography, but that's also characteristic of an endemic illness - distributed across a large geographic region among a small percentage of the population with relatively little impact.

[Dylan16807]

Notice how I didn't say growth, since it bounces up and down. And that looks like a significant proportion to me.

If your argument is that these numbers are not enough for "very widespread extent", then are you saying it was never a pandemic to begin with?

And you already said it was endemic. Are you arguing that a pandemic needs bigger numbers than that?

[pc86]

You didn't say growth but the definition of pandemic is "characterized by very widespread growth or extent."

98.5% of ED visits are for something else. What would that number have been in 2020 or 2021?

[Dylan16807]

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/us/covid-cases.html

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html

The severity has dropped more than the prevalence.

Hospitalizations suggest that in the US the peak in Jan 2024 was around 80% as big as Jan 2023. If that's accurate, then Jan 2024 had more cases per day than most of 2020 and a good chunk of 2021. That's a lot of extent. There had been 120 thousand cases in the entire world when pandemic was originally declared, and the US is currently doing a multiple of that each week.