Yet, it is a pandemic. That fact does change the calculus of whether to recommend treatment. Do you say, "I don't have enough evidence yet to recommend it?" Or do you say, "Based on the evidence we have, it is a good idea?" There is no right answer until post-pandemic studies.
'Pandemic' just means a new strain reaches the same widespread distribution as old strains. No one doubts that the new strain has done that.
The troubling subtext I saw in revere's comments is the suggestion that we're in some sort of unique crisis where it's irresponsible to give prominent coverage to substantive doubts about Tamiflu. We're not in such a crisis, and even in a real crisis, we need to retain our skeptical faculties.
Tamiflu is a relatively new drug (not many decades old) with known and potentially-unknown side-effects.
It's being used being to treat a disease for which, whether new-strain or old-strain, 99.9%+ of all sufferers recover completely. (Recent CDC estimates are that 1-in-6 Americans has already had H1N1/09, with up to 10K deaths. That's a 99.98% survival rate.)
And, the strongest case for Tamiflu's effectiveness seems to be that if given promptly at the right early stage of infection, it might make symptoms a bit less severe or duration a little shorter.
People with a high risk of complications may still find the costs and side-effects worth it, but for everyone else, it's important to know and emphasize how tentative and limited the evidence is for Tamiflu's effectiveness.
Um, your first two definitions describe H1N1, the third is irrelevant. Besides, it's a settled question if the WHO calls it a pandemic. http://www.who.int/csr/disease/swineflu/en/
