Talk:COVID-19 pandemic

Current consensus

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01. Superseded by #9

The first few sentences of the lead's second paragraph should state The virus is typically spread during close contact and via respiratory droplets produced when people cough or sneeze. Respiratory droplets may be produced during breathing but the virus is not considered airborne. It may also spread when one touches a contaminated surface and then their face. It is most contagious when people are symptomatic, although spread may be possible before symptoms appear. (RfC March 2020)

02. Superseded by #7

The infobox should feature a per capita count map most prominently, and a total count by country map secondarily. (RfC March 2020)

03. Obsolete

The article should not use {{Current}} at the top. (March 2020)

04. Do not include a sentence in the lead section noting comparisons to World War II. (March 2020)

05. Cancelled

Include subsections covering the domestic responses of Italy, China, Iran, the United States, and South Korea. Do not include individual subsections for France, Germany, the Netherlands, Australia and Japan. (RfC March 2020) Include a short subsection on Sweden focusing on the policy controversy. (May 2020)

Subsequently overturned by editing and recognized as obsolete. (July 2024)

06. Obsolete

There is a 30 day moratorium on move requests until 26 April 2020. (March 2020)

07. There is no consensus that the infobox should feature a confirmed cases count map most prominently, and a deaths count map secondarily. (May 2020)

08. Superseded by #16

The clause on xenophobia in the lead section should read ...and there have been incidents of xenophobia and discrimination against Chinese people and against those perceived as being Chinese or as being from areas with high infection rates. (RfC April 2020)

09. Cancelled

Supersedes #1. The first several sentences of the lead section's second paragraph should state The virus is mainly spread during close contact and by small droplets produced when those infected cough, sneeze or talk. These droplets may also be produced during breathing; however, they rapidly fall to the ground or surfaces and are not generally spread through the air over large distances. People may also become infected by touching a contaminated surface and then their face. The virus can survive on surfaces for up to 72 hours. Coronavirus is most contagious during the first three days after onset of symptoms, although spread may be possible before symptoms appear and in later stages of the disease. (April 2020)

Notes

On 17:16, 6 April 2020, these first several sentences were replaced with an extracted fragment from the coronavirus disease 2019 article, which at the time was last edited at 17:11.

010. The article title is COVID-19 pandemic. The title of related pages should follow this scheme as well. (RM April 2020, RM August 2020)

011. The lead section should use Wuhan, China to describe the virus's origin, without mentioning Hubei or otherwise further describing Wuhan. (April 2020)

012. Superseded by #19

The lead section's second sentence should be phrased using the words first identified and December 2019. (May 2020)

013. Superseded by #15

File:President Donald Trump suggests measures to treat COVID-19 during Coronavirus Task Force press briefing.webm should be used as the visual element of the misinformation section, with the caption U.S. president Donald Trump suggested at a press briefing on 23 April that disinfectant injections or exposure to ultraviolet light might help treat COVID-19. There is no evidence that either could be a viable method. (1:05 min) (May 2020, June 2020)

014. Overturned

Do not mention the theory that the virus was accidentally leaked from a laboratory in the article. (RfC May 2020) This result was overturned at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard, as there is consensus that there is no consensus to include or exclude the lab leak theory. (RfC May 2024)

015. Supersedes #13. File:President Donald Trump suggests measures to treat COVID-19 during Coronavirus Task Force press briefing.webm should not be used as the visual element of the misinformation section. (RfC November 2020)

016. Supersedes #8. Incidents of xenophobia and discrimination are considered WP:UNDUE for a full sentence in the lead. (RfC January 2021)

017. Only include one photograph in the infobox. There is no clear consensus that File:COVID-19 Nurse (cropped).jpg should be that one photograph. (May 2021)

018. Superseded by #19

The first sentence is The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is a global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). (August 2021, RfC October 2023)

019. Supersedes #12 and #18. The first sentence is The global COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an outbreak in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. (June 2024)

De facto "from-till" must be made better visible

The first paragraph MUST contain the year when life retuned to normal in most countries, as does the infobox (as a heading plus inside). It's history already, and people come here looking for the basic "from-till" info of any historical event - concisely and well visible. The details interest less and less users, they're yesterday's news.

To preempt conradiction: China kept strict rules for longer, the WHO had its own criteria, but historically and in practical terms, most people returned to normal life in 2022, the criteria being - pls. mentally add the phrase "in most countries" to every line:

• very low rate of severe illness and fatalities
• no mass closures, isolation, quaranteen, curfew, Zoom schooling etc.
• no mandatory mask wearing, social distancing, extreme hygene rules
• high vaccination and mass immunity rate

Please, don't fall back into pedantic arguments. Compare with Spanish flu pandemic etc.: deadly between X and Y, lingering for Z more years/months, period. All else is of interest only for epidemiologists and other specialists, i.e. here maybe worth keeping outside the intro (lead), but definitely not within. Thanks. Arminden (talk) 10:18, 28 July 2024 (UTC)

The lead already says "Common mitigation measures during the public health emergency included travel restrictions, lockdowns, business restrictions and closures, workplace hazard controls, mask mandates, quarantines, testing systems, and contact tracing of the infected." - which of course means these things were not common outside of the period of the public health emergency. The last paragraph of the lead also touches on this, and the infobox has the PHEIC dates. That said, I wouldn't mind adding something in the prose similar to or based on what Tedros Ghebreyesus said here, about how life in most countries returned to how it was before the pandemic by May 2023. I certainly agree that such social aspects and the 'return to normal' are a huge part of this as a historical event, and that the topic is not purely about a technical epidemiological definition (although even in that field there is not a singular, specific definition of "pandemic"). Crossroads ^-talk- 02:50, 30 July 2024 (UTC)

"The pandemic" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect The pandemic has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 August 25 § The pandemic until a consensus is reached. Mondtaler (talk) 15:34, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

thank you--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 16:42, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

Draft:Humor during the COVID-19 pandemic

There’s a draft with great potential here: Draft:Humor during the COVID-19 pandemic. Thriley (talk) 18:36, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

that needs to go to AFC (and would seem, even if accepted, not appropriate for this article) IMO--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 18:51, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

I posted it here to get any interested editors attention. Thriley (talk) 19:07, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

Tense change

An update to the article has recently been made that is concerned with the article using past tense, changing parts of it to use present tense as it "Is still 2024". I am unable to edit this article myself but this edit seems misguided. This is a historial event, not a biography of a living person or a timeless concept. It introduces inconsistent tense and will become inaccurate when it is no longer 2024. 90.193.239.212 (talk) 03:00, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

I made this edit addressing that before seeing this. Crossroads ^-talk- 03:11, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

It is disputed that the pandemic is a historical event. The article itself says there is no expert consensus. Unfortunately you won't have known how profoundly I dispute this as the pandemic is my ever-present reality and inflicts moral injury onto me to deny it.

There are articles from time to time that contain inconsistent due to not being amended fully. The answer is to amend the articles to be consistent throughout.

This appears to be a concern to amend a future potential inaccuracy that doesn't exist at present and is actually making the article inaccurate. I probably didn't explain my amendment enough - a failure of mine for not wanting to appear to be giving too much detail. What appeared in the reason for the edit was therefore about half of what I originally wrote; the rest didn't appear. It added that if it was now were, then it is no longer are and would mean the experts are again not uncertain anymore and we therefore now would have consensus about whether the pandemic has ended or has not. It isn't being suggested this is the case that we have expert consensus however. I am not even sure the World Health Organization thinks the pandemic is ongoing anymore. Its Covid-19 technical lead did a few months ago but I am not completely sure that this is still the position as there seemed some about-turn in which I keep hearing things that weren't disclosed to me before and some revisionist attempt to end the pandemic it sometimes seems, for example by then saying it depends on which definition is used, something that wasn't disclosed at the start in 2020 when it didn't seem to rely on using another definition or attempt to redefine the pandemic away. It seems to be part of the cultural struggle we are now having as described in the article referenced about the assertion that it is a social phenomenon as much as a biological one.

It then seems to be "not going to be declared over in the near future" https://fullfact.org/health/who-covid-pandemic-over is still the case now as it is still near future from when that was written only last year. We have just had a Covid wave in my country that has been worse than the spring Covid wave - deaths in a number of weeks in it have been twice those in parts of the spring wave that did not reach anything like what we now have and the repeated waves and the fact the virus is out of control as of a couple of weeks ago (10% test positivity) would be arguments on the side of the pandemic being ongoing (as we now have sides in a debate given the lack of expert consensus, even if it still seems the formed view from the outcome of the WHO is it is ongoing).

aspaa (talk) 03:36, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

A few weeks ago, someone at the US CDC said COVID-19 is "The best way to describe COVID right now is as endemic but with these periodic epidemics" ...and that we were in one of those "periodic epidemics", which appear (on the basis of a very small sample size) to be happening twice a year for a few months at a time. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:42, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

Note: The following had already been written but not published before the above [Now edited as heading has appeared very large] If we all ignore it, it doesn't exist? Like a lesion we fail to get checked out

"This means that it is possible for the pandemic to have ended according to one definition (e.g., according to a definition based on how people behave)". This seems significant amount of people are trying to define the pandemic out of existence because it is uncomfortable and inconvenient. However, doing so does not change reality of what actually exists. In addition, the words "can be considered" a social phenomenon are weasel words that tell me nothing. The earth can be considered to be flat. This is factually true that it can be considered to be this way because, indeed, it *is* true that it is considered to be flat - by flat Earth believers. As I don't consider the pandemic to be a social phenomenon, therefore it is also true to say the pandemic can't be considered to be a social phenomenon - because it can't, namely by me. It is therefore misleading part-truth to put only one side and not the also true opposite viewpoint. Anything "can be considered" to be anything anyone wants to consider anything to be, and regardless of whether or not it is actually is what someone considers it to be.

However, as it is possible for a pandemic to have ended regardless of reality, now anything is possible at all and any Wikipedia article is now open to amendment on any truth, untruth, truthiness or post-truth on the basis it is "possible" because any human being may think it is. It is possible the statement in the article is nonsense. It's also possible it isn't, so again seems to mean nothing because anything can be "possible" on the basis of redefinition including any to suit any "facts" or opinion anyone wants. It is indeed possible that the earth is flat. I can simply define the word "flat" to mean something other than what flat is and, using such a definition, the earth can now be flat if I define "flat" as meaning the earth's actual shape.

Can be considered? By whom?

"Instead, the disease simply disappears from his narrative." This appears to be truth-as-narrative rather than truth-as-fact. And the problem is that truth defined by a narrative can be demolished by the facts, whereas truth in the form of fact and reality is a matter of fact and doesn't follow narratives that are false: the disease did not actually disappear, only from his narrative, a narrative that paints a false picture in which the disease is omitted when it is not omitted by reality and factual existence and therefore is subject to that challenge that shows the narrative to be factually wrong. In other words, to accept such a narrative, we have now disappeared into a world in which reality no longer matters and Wikipedia can now be based on fiction.

aspaa (talk) 03:02, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

I don't know if you've spent much time thinking about the problem of definitions, but it's pretty important for understanding the difficulties here. So let me remind you of the If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? question. Sound, as you know, can be validly defined in two important ways:

1. The physical vibration of molecules – in which case, a falling tree makes a sound regardless of whether anyone hears it, and
2. The perception of that vibration in the brain – in which case, if no one hears it, there's no sound.

The response to that question needs to be: Which definition of sound are you using?

We have a similar problem with pandemic. If lots of people are getting sick and high-risk people are dying, but schools and restaurants are still open, is the pandemic over? There's a lay-person definition that says yes. There's a mathematical definition that says (maybe) no. (See the note about "cure" on my user page for a similar situation.) But there isn't a single yes or a single no that correctly answers the question for all common definitions of the word pandemic. So, like the tree falling in the forest, the response needs to be: Which definition of pandemic are you using? WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:52, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

I think Wikipedia should be using the correct term. If we look at recent MEDRS like PMID:39205196 is makes the explicit point the pandemic is not over, so our article is looking odd is recording some previous wobbles about that. Bon courage (talk) 04:07, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

I don't necessarily consider there is such a lay-person definition and this is because schools and restaurants have still been open for quite some time by November 2023 in which (Great Britain) public opinion polling still indicated 59% of the representative adults surveyed thought the pandemic was not yet at an end. Therefore the lay person was not in fact saying yes at a time when both had been open for quite some time already. By March 2024, the percentages were 44% saying pandemic not at an end, 45% saying at an end, therefore within margin of error and no consensus in public. https://yougov.co.uk/topics/health/survey-results/daily/2024/03/22/bf4bb/1 Lay people overall were not saying resounding yes it is over, they were in fact divided. In fact looking at the more detailed figures, around two-thirds of people aged 65 or over were saying not ended. In March 2024, all this despite many months/a couple of years even of schools restaurants open.

However, I don't think all this discussion is actually necessary. It seems my edit has been reverted, so I am reluctant to go back and amend it again. After going to a Wikipedia page on 'weasel words' however, I noticed it leads to a section on the As of template. It therefore seems the solution is to use the "As of" template which makes clear the information is time-limited (still having nearly three months to run) and will need amending in the future. Inaccuracy is a future issue on this and shouldn't be made inaccurate as it now currently is. It is the case experts are, and not were, because there isn't a suggestion there is a consensus in the experts in the article referenced. Or maybe it is best to use the month and year of the article and then past tense would be correct. The article about the differences between experts on whether the pandemic has ended. The month this year that that was first published is in the past. 2024 isn't and it isn't being suggested the lack of expert consensus made clear by the article has changed since.

I think the "As of" template is intended to deal with this situation:

"Usage guidelines

Usually "as of" is used only in cases where an article is intended to provide the most current information available and will need a future update. It should not be used for historical information that will not change."

It is possible that the information from the time the article was published a few months ago might change, for example if experts came to a consensus that the pandemic has ended.

Therefore, the As of template regarding 2024 and present tense as this is still the current position that there is the lack of expert consensus, as far as I am aware, even if the WHO seems to be it is ongoing, and "Update after" template of 31 December 2024.

It is the precise situation in my view, on these templates, what they are supposed to be here for and should therefore be used in this case. Aspaa (talk) 04:22, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

The point is people use 'pandemic' in a slang sense to mean 'the emergency measures (that affect me personally)'. Medically speaking, the pandemic means an unpredictable/uncontrolled pattern of worldwide viral infection. We're in that situation. Bon courage (talk) 04:44, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

Some definitions of "pandemic" require that the disease be new, i.e. one to which the population has no immunity, which clearly does not apply anymore. Regardless, COVID-19 is neither unpredictable nor uncontrolled. It has a winter and a summer wave, whose relative intensities vary somewhat (as do flu seasons), but it has been repeatedly correctly predicted by health agencies and experts that these waves will be low (relative to the PHEIC) in severe disease and deaths, which continue to decline on average. [1] It is controlled by widespread deployment/availability of vaccines, other medical countermeasures, ventilation improvements, and PPE, and this control is again seen in the far lower rates of severe disease and death. Crossroads ^-talk- 05:18, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

Seeing a source entitled "Why is COVID-19 surging again ... ?" to claim COVID-19 is "controlled" gets the day of to a classic Wikipedian start, I must say! Bon courage (talk) 05:26, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

The PMID cited above is from an MDPI journal, and hence of fairly low weight. It remains the case that, per reliable sources (in Talk:COVID-19_pandemic/Archive_49#Proposal_for_modified_text_in_lead and in the recent one cited above by WhatamIdoing), a great many medical experts either are ambivalent, or outright say the pandemic is over/that it is endemic. This ambivalence includes the WHO's COVID lead Maria Van Kerkhove as well; the WHO itself as a body has no mechanism for assessing whether something is a pandemic. The term really does have no specific epidemiological definition beyond vague generalities, and in and of itself has no impact on medical treatment of patients or on public policy (for which the PHEIC or more precise stats like hospitalization numbers are more relevant), so it isn't surprising that nailing down the transition time isn't a common topic of research papers.

Even aside from that, I very much support the idea that epidemiology is not the only relevant field regarding whether something is a pandemic. A pandemic is as much a social phenomenon as a biomedical one.

For the lead text overall, the consensus here is quite clear. I'm not hugely against it if people want to have the 2024 sentence be in present tense, or have it say "March 2024" instead of just 2024, or use the "as of" template. But I don't see the point either. Crossroads ^-talk- 04:57, 4 September 2024 (UTC)