This “op-ed in the _IHT_ by Laurie Garrett”:http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/11/opinion/11iht-edgarrett.html provides some food for thought. It concerns how to express information about pandemic influenza, suggesting that a one-dimensional scale of phases be replaced with a more informative and useful two-dimensional scale.

Parsimony, it seems, can be taken too far.