I find that distinction odd. The definition of a pandemic is "a disease prevalent over a whole country or the world."

Is your claim that they are really saying is that there is a virus, but it is not "prevalent over a country or world"? For the pandemic to be a "hoax", there needs to be either no virus, or it isn't worldwide. That's a strange hill to die on to defend denialism.

If you're going to say "well really they are referring to something else when they say the pandemic is a hoax" then you're arguing about what you think they meant, not what they said.