The alert phase system developed by WHO in 2005 is a well reasoned graded assessment of the global spread of an influenza virus.  However, the deletion of “enormous numbers of deaths and illness” from the definition of an influenza pandemic in May, 2009 enabled WHO to declare the 2009 H1H1 swine influenza epidemics in Mexico and the USA as an influenza pandemic and a public health emergency of international concern, regardless of whether the new virus may cause enormous numbers of deaths and illness!