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LEARN9: Secrets of crisis communication
By far, my favorite secret was on "managing panic in a pandemic". Why? It has many applications besides pandemics or emergencies.
From what I got out of the text, when a pandemic happens, the main goal of managing panic is to spread the right information and perform "psychological first aid", basically reducing the level of panic in a population to limit self-destructive actions. While this is of utmost importance in an emergency situation, it can be extremely important in other situations of mass panic or discontent.
For example, take the sudden protest of vaccinations that started happening a few years ago. A mother had their child vaccinated with standard vaccinations. Then, signs of autism started developing. The mother blamed it on the vaccinations—and she got others in on it, trying to spread the word. In this case, however, correlation was not causation, and several later medical studies disproved the link between autism and vaccinations (especially the suspect mercury-based ingredient in most vaccinations, thimerosal). Unfortunately, the rumors and misinformation didn't stop when the science came out. (An up side and down side to the internet—information very easily takes hold, but if the information is wrong, then all manner of havoc can be caused.) To this day, many parents refuse to vaccinate their children because of an irrational and scientifically disproven fear.
Here's where crisis management techniques could come in handy. If you think about it, the situation is very similar—less dire, yes, but very similar. You have misinformation spread. You have psychological panic in (a small part of) the population. You have an easy solution. What's needed? Psychological first aid. With proper handling, this situation and many others like it—non-emergency or emergency—could become a thing of the past.
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Comment by A.V.Koshy on April 29, 2010 at 12:21am
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this is a good post nathaniel - please excuse me but i'm personally involved and i'm not trying to be sarky here honestly, just trying very hard to learn - this comment is not criticism of your post which is excellent
i have two questions which is not about the rumour but
1. why is it "less dire" - an autistic chilld can't be compared with many who have flu? numbers matter more than an indiviudal? a small part of the population also counts, doesn't it?
2. vaccinations are helpful but what about people like me who came from an earlier generation and got only one vaccination but are quite healthy all the same....
this may sound like a very primitive question to you but what happens if we eschew all vaccinations or give kids all available vaccinations - both ways, are the risks same in today's world or less?
nowadays there are so many vaccines...
my kids have to take vaccines till 18 and new ones keep coming up -swine flu vaccine hadn't reached india the last time i was there but is freely available in finland.most people in india cant afford some of the vaccines cos they are too costly and they just let it go or they haven't even heard of many of them...
i agree with your conclusion fully
given proper info and proper counselling the fears due to lack of knowledge can be removed
how does one filter the information correctly- use a data miner? - are there any that filters rumours, half-baked knowedge or misinformation out of whats on the net and leaves only the best stuff in our hands?
if you can give me links to such data miners it would help me not only for my evokation but even later when i go into real serious work to evoke in the autistic world.
sorry if my comment is too long but i'm thinking hard about your post's example
aslo sorry if it doesnt quite hit the mark of what you exactly wanted to convey but went off at a tangent but the tangent is very important to me
regarding whether vaccines cause autism or not because of thimerasol i really cannot draw any conclusions not being a science man so i'm quite ready to take your word for it
your certainty makes me also ask you this question. what does cause it then? any idea? genetic? environmental? stress during pregnancy? steroids administered during pregnancy? these are all things i consider possible casues as of now....
please answer....
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Comment by Nathaniel Fruchter on April 29, 2010 at 3:16am
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> 1. why is it "less dire" - an autistic chilld can't be compared with many who have flu? numbers matter more than an indiviudal? a small part of the population also counts, doesn't it?
An autistic child certainly isn't less dire, I'm talking about general misinformation being less dire than widespread panic during a pandemic.
> this may sound like a very primitive question to you but what happens if we eschew all vaccinations or give kids all available vaccinations - both ways, are the risks same in today's world or less?
I'm no expert, but there's such a thing as herd immunity—the more people that are vaccinated, the less chance that an unvaccinated person (like you) will get sick. So even if, say, 5% of the population isn't vaccinated against the flu, just because the other 95% are, there's an exponentially smaller chance that you'll ever get sick because you have a 95% vaccinated population as a buffer.
> how does one filter the information correctly- use a data miner? - are there any that filters rumours, half-baked knowedge or misinformation out of whats on the net and leaves only the best stuff in our hands?
That is a very good question and something fundamental to the internet. How do you discern misinformation from information? It's something that I'm not sure I have the answer to.
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thanks nathaniel
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