Normally, yes, but the seasonal flu is excluded from the definition so we don't have to say that there's an annual recurring pandemic. When agencies talk about flu pandemic preparations, they're referring to an outbreak so severe that it no longer counts as just the seasonal flu.

Right. But COVID-19 isn't influenza related so all these flu comparisons are moot as far as I'm concerned. The mortality appears for now - with all the figures that I've seen - to be much higher.

If this thing keeps going like it has for the last couple of weeks then it will make the last H1N1 pandemic look like a walk in the park. The final count on that was 100's of thousands dead in 199 different countries. And it didn't take off nearly as fast as this.

But new pathogens always look much worse than they are because we haven't got testing sorted out yet. We test the very serious cases, we don't test the mild cases.

Yes, that's a good point. Especially valid because there is a very real limit on the number of test kits available. That's also a risk in case of asymptomatic spreading.