Treyfish
Moderator
“No Reason for Alarm” Is a Foolishly
Over-Reassuring Message about the Novel Coronavirus Spreading from Wuhan, China
Email from Peter M. Sandman to National Post journalist Sharon Kirkey, January 29, 2020
(Sharon Kirkey’s January 30 article in the National Post, based in part on this email, is available online.)
My most fervent risk communication complaint at the moment is the tendency of many top officials in the U.S., Canada, and Europe to overemphasize the fact that the risk of the novel Wuhan coronavirus here and now is tiny – as if that meant that people should (or could!) wait to worry until the risk here and now got bigger. “No reason for alarm,” is bad science as well as bad risk communication. Officials and experts are alarmed already – reason enough for the public to gird up its loins as well.
Worry is about the future. Telling people not to worry about an emer..
Instead of deriding people’s fears about the Wuhan coronavirus, I would advise officials and reporters to focus more on the high likelihood that things will get worse and the not-so-small possibility that they will get much worse. I think there is little need to ameliorate public over-reaction now. The bigger need is to reduce public over-reaction later to predictable bad news that will take people by surprise insofar as they weren’t sufficiently forewarned and didn’t get enough chance to rehearse emotionally. My wife and colleague Jody Lanard MD says to tell you that adjustment reactions are “like tabletop exercises for regular people.” Officials should help the public rehearse better, not tell people not to rehearse.
I’m particularly put off when officials deride the public for worrying more about Wuhan coronavirus than influenza. They say that people are fools if they’re freaking out about the coronavirus but not getting a flu shot. But that doesn’t stop them from freaking out about the coronavirus and it doesn’t make them want to get a flu shot. I’d much rather see officials warn that “One flu is bad enough. A second flu would be awful. One of our fears is that this new coronavirus could possibly become as widespread and dangerous as flu – and at least at first, with no vaccine to help ameliorate the threat!”
A great Canadian example: Allison McGeer in a January 26 STAT article by Helen Branswell:
“The more we learn about it, the greater the possibility is that transmission will not be able to be controlled with public health measures,” said Dr. Allison McGeer, a Toronto-based infectious disease specialist who contracted SARS in 2003 and who helped Saudi Arabia control several hospital-based outbreaks of MERS.
If that’s the case, she said, “we’re living with a new human virus, and we’re going to find out if it will spread around the globe.” McGeer cautioned that because the true severity of the outbreak isn’t yet known, it’s impossible to predict what the impact of that spread would be, though she noted it would likely pose significant challenges to health care facilities...
Feel free to use any of the above if it’s useful.:tiphat:http://psandman.com/articles/Corona1.htm
Over-Reassuring Message about the Novel Coronavirus Spreading from Wuhan, China
Email from Peter M. Sandman to National Post journalist Sharon Kirkey, January 29, 2020
(Sharon Kirkey’s January 30 article in the National Post, based in part on this email, is available online.)
My most fervent risk communication complaint at the moment is the tendency of many top officials in the U.S., Canada, and Europe to overemphasize the fact that the risk of the novel Wuhan coronavirus here and now is tiny – as if that meant that people should (or could!) wait to worry until the risk here and now got bigger. “No reason for alarm,” is bad science as well as bad risk communication. Officials and experts are alarmed already – reason enough for the public to gird up its loins as well.
Worry is about the future. Telling people not to worry about an emer..
Instead of deriding people’s fears about the Wuhan coronavirus, I would advise officials and reporters to focus more on the high likelihood that things will get worse and the not-so-small possibility that they will get much worse. I think there is little need to ameliorate public over-reaction now. The bigger need is to reduce public over-reaction later to predictable bad news that will take people by surprise insofar as they weren’t sufficiently forewarned and didn’t get enough chance to rehearse emotionally. My wife and colleague Jody Lanard MD says to tell you that adjustment reactions are “like tabletop exercises for regular people.” Officials should help the public rehearse better, not tell people not to rehearse.
I’m particularly put off when officials deride the public for worrying more about Wuhan coronavirus than influenza. They say that people are fools if they’re freaking out about the coronavirus but not getting a flu shot. But that doesn’t stop them from freaking out about the coronavirus and it doesn’t make them want to get a flu shot. I’d much rather see officials warn that “One flu is bad enough. A second flu would be awful. One of our fears is that this new coronavirus could possibly become as widespread and dangerous as flu – and at least at first, with no vaccine to help ameliorate the threat!”
A great Canadian example: Allison McGeer in a January 26 STAT article by Helen Branswell:
“The more we learn about it, the greater the possibility is that transmission will not be able to be controlled with public health measures,” said Dr. Allison McGeer, a Toronto-based infectious disease specialist who contracted SARS in 2003 and who helped Saudi Arabia control several hospital-based outbreaks of MERS.
If that’s the case, she said, “we’re living with a new human virus, and we’re going to find out if it will spread around the globe.” McGeer cautioned that because the true severity of the outbreak isn’t yet known, it’s impossible to predict what the impact of that spread would be, though she noted it would likely pose significant challenges to health care facilities...
Feel free to use any of the above if it’s useful.:tiphat:http://psandman.com/articles/Corona1.htm