Discussion Forum—A Way with Words, a fun radio show and podcast about language

Every year we get flu and cold pandemics, but some people associate the word with something on the scale of the 1918 pandemic. The article states that dictionaries and medical journals can be “too vague or too narrow, contradictory and clouded by jargon.” I generally disagree. Some pandemics are just more deadly than others; it's not the word itself causing the confusion. Similarly, some types of influenza are more deadly than others. The HIV virus is more deadly than the herpes virus. Are we confused about the words influenza and virus?

The news media and the CDC should take some of the blame for the confusion. Normal, garden-variety flus - the kinds that kill thousands of Americans each year and lots more worldwide - are called seasonal flus, even though they are pandemics. But it seems we only hear about pandemics when the CDC is caught off-guard or they are concerned that a particular virus is a lot more deadly than usual.

There was all sorts of confusion about the recent outbreak of “swine” flu. I'm not sure whose fault that is, or if it is anyone's fault. Maybe that's the way it goes when there is uncertainty and surprise. It's like we're all expecting the inevitable deadly virus that will wipe out a billion people: THE pandemic of the 21st century, the End Times.