When is a pandemic over?

 Consider this unfortunately familiar scenario, several months ago a highly infectious , sometimes deadly virus infected humans for the first time. And then it spreads faster than public health managers can contain it. Now the world health organization (WHO) has declared a pandemic meaning there is spreading world wide .The death toll is starting to rise and everyone is asking the same question. When will the pandemic end? The WHO will likely declare the pandemic over once the infection is mostly contained and rates of transmission drops significantly throughout the world. But exactly when that happens depends on what global governments choose to do next. They have three main options . Raise through it , delay and vaccinate or coordinate nd crush. 

1. In the first , governments and communities do nothing to hold the spread and instead allow people to get exposed as quickly as possible. Due to this measure hundreds and thousands and more get infected instantly and some may perished and some survive by building  immune responses. And due to this herd immunity comes in where the virus couldn't find any host . So the pandemic gets over in a short period of time. 

2. In the second case , as soon as pandemic is declared . Both governments and communities around the world slow the spread of the virus to give research facilities time to produce vaccine. They buy this crucial time through tactics  that may include widespread testing to identify carriers , quarantining the infected and physical distancing.

3. The third strategy is co-ordinate and crush . The idea here is to simultaneously Starve the virus everywhere through a combination of quarantine , social distancing and restricting travel . The critical fact that is synchronise responses. In a typical pandemic when one country is peaking another may be getting its first case . Instead of every leader responding to virus in their jurisdiction here everyone must treat the world as a giant interconnected system it is. If coordinated properly , this could end the pandemic in few months with low loss of lives. 

FROM TED TALKS DAILY