# 3231
Peter Sandman is a risk communications expert, and makes his living advising companies, agencies, and governments on how to handle media relations during a crisis.
Risk communications can deal with everything from a terrorist attack or a pandemic to a CEO’s indiscretion or a product recall.
Depending on the circumstances, getting it right can salvage a company, resurrect a career, and even save lives.
The Peter M. Sandman Risk Communication Website combines the expertise of Dr. Sandman, along with his wife Jody Lanard M.D., and is is a veritable treasure trove of risk communications information.
Since the Sandman website has so much information, a good place to start is the Crisis Communication (High Hazard, High Outrage) page. Here you will find a number of articles on risk communication during events such as pandemics, hurricanes, and other disasters.
Today Dr. Sandman has a commentary that appears in Nature, which delves into the things that – from a risk communications perspective – the CDC has gotten right, and the things they have gotten wrong over the first few weeks of the H1N1 Swine flu outbreak.
By all means, read it in its entirety.
And then, when you are done, make plans to visit Dr. Sandman’s website.
But fair warning, pack a lunch. There is a lot to see and absorb.
Pandemics: good hygiene is not enough
Peter M. Sandman1
- Peter M. Sandman is a risk-communication consultant, 59 Ridgeview Road, Princeton, New Jersey 08540-7601, USA.
Email: peter@psandman.comAbstract
The US government is doing well to communicate uncertainty over swine flu. It must also help the public to visualize what a bad pandemic might be like, says Peter M. Sandman.
R. LARSEN/THE GRAND RAPIDS PRESS/AP
Hygiene is useful, but getting ready for a pandemic also requires stocking up on key supplies.
By the time you read this, the outbreak of H1N1 'swine flu' may no longer seem to be a worldwide threat and the disease may have receded from the headlines. As the initial fuss dies down, public-health experts will remain on high alert, but the media and public will move on to something else, muttering about fear-mongering.
And whatever the situation is like now, it won't be the end of the story. A mutated virus (more virulent or transmissible or resistant to drugs) could appear a few months later.
As a risk-communication professional, I have been watching the US government walk a tightrope between over-reassurance and over-alarm about a swine-flu outbreak that could easily turn out to be devastating, relatively mild or anywhere in between. The United States hasn't issued false reassurances that they will keep the pandemic from 'our' shores — a temptation to which dozens of governments have succumbed. Here I will show what else I think the country is doing right — and wrong.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is doing a superb job of explaining the current situation and how uncertain it is. The reiteration of uncertainty and what that means — advice may change; local strategies may differ — has been unprecedentedly good.
The CDC's biggest failure is in not doing enough to help people visualize what a bad pandemic might be like so they can understand and start preparing for the worst.
