Throw Out the Playbook: A New Plan Arrives

http://www.redflagsdaily.com/articles/2005_sep12.php
(viewable with subscription only - please considering joining to support
their wonderful effort to get the truth out)

Throw Out the Playbook: A New Plan Arrives
By Red Flags Columnist, Sherri Tenpenny, DO

Every winter, it is reported that millions of people in the world get the
flu. Coworkers and classmates are home, sick and miserable, for about a
week. A few — mostly the elderly and infirm — die. We’re told the annual
death toll exceeds 36,000 in the United States and a few hundred thousand
around the globe. This computer-generated number has gaping holes in its
credibility, however, because medical authorities don't separate and verify
those who actually died of influenza from those who died of a "flu-like
illness” or of flu-complications, such as pneumonia. (1)

As a general rule, people think of the flu season as a nuisance. Even major
controversies — like last year’s contaminated vaccine supply that cut the
number of doses by 50 percent — barely made a blip on the radar screen. For
a few weeks, the media hyped the shortages with images of people standing
in line to be vaccinated. But by January, a vaccine shortage turned into a
vaccine glut. Authorities abandoned the rationing and started to urge
everyone once again to get in line. After all that hoopla, we ended up with
a very mild flu season.

In addition, the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) has a
media plan in place. Referred to as a “Seven-Step Recipe for Generating
Interest in, and Demand for, Flu (or any other) Vaccination,” it was
engineered to ensure the economic success of the season’s flu vaccine
campaign. The program is designed to methodically manipulate the general
public through the use of major media (newswires, television). The
scheduled, fear-based messages are aimed at convincing the unsuspecting
public that not only is the flu shot necessary, but people should be
demanding it. This results in millions of dollars of free advertising for
vaccine manufacturers. (2)

The “recipe” is ramping up all over again with the approach of fall: The
annual flu vaccine push is about to begin. “Make a plan, then work the
plan,” comes to mind. But the plan may be wearing thin. The general public
has come to understand that the flu isn’t a catastrophic illness. Like the
sparrows to Capistrano, it arrives at about the same time every year. Most
people are showing the same ho-hum attitude to the frenzied reports of the
avian flu virus, H5N1, also referred to as “bird flu.”

Predictably, officials don’t like it one bit. They are finding it difficult
to get people really worried about avian influenza no matter how many
articles of “catastrophic concern” they have published. But this time, they
need to walk a tight line. They saw the economic consequences caused by
“epidemic hype” in 2003, when the world was focused on the SARS (severe
acute respiratory syndrome) outbreak.

The SARS virus was thought to spread from humans after infected animals
were sold and slaughtered in unsanitary and crowded markets in China's
Guangdong province. Over a period of five months, 8,049 people were
reported to be infected by what turned out to be a novel human coronavirus.
The vast majority of those (7,248) were in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
Even though there were 774 deaths, or close to 10 percent of known cases,
SARS didn’t become “the new pandemic,” killing millions as feared. (3)

The SARS experience, however, taught officials a critically important
lesson about overestimating the staying power of an infection. The economic
impact on the Asia-Pacific region of the six-month SARS outbreak was nearly
$40 billion.

In Canada, 251 people were infected and 43 died. (4) The Canadian Tourism
Board estimated that the epidemic cost the nation's economy $419 million.
The Ontario health minister estimated that the cost to the province's
health-care system, including money spent on special SARS clinics and
supplies to protect healthcare workers, was about $763 million. That’s more
than $1.18 billion spent on one disease during one season in just one country.

The SARS outbreak also had a substantial impact on the global airline
industry. Flights to Asia and the Pacific Rim decreased by 45 percent and
the number of flights between Hong Kong and the United States fell 69
percent. (5)

Undeniably, there is a genuine downside to issuing warnings that turn out
to be unnecessary hype. Unfortunately, the way that the H5N1 avian flu
infection is being handled is starting to inflict a similar economic
impact. Since 2003, more than 160 million domestic ducks, chickens and
geese have been killed in eight countries. The cost to various local
economies is already estimated in the tens of millions. And based on
information freely available on the Internet, bird flu is predicted to
cause the “Great Global Depression,” 40 percent of the world’s population
to be infected, an unimaginable number of deaths and, in Western
civilization, “the end of life, as we know it.” (6,7)

But, if the apocalypse is coming, the general public does not seem overly
concerned. The old playbook isn’t working this time. No one seems to be
paying much attention to the scenarios being portrayed by the CDC and the
World Health Organization (WHO). Officials need a new plan.

Enter risk communication.

The field of risk communication is relatively new. Dating from the early
1980s, it evolved from several different fields of study: health education,
public relations, psychology, risk perception and risk assessment. The CDC
needed a new plan to get people to take bird flu seriously and to move
government health officials to earmark massive amounts of money for the
planning process.

* A new 10-step “recipe” crafted by risk communication experts, Peter
M. Sandman, Ph.D., and Jody Lanard, MD, based in Princeton, New Jersey, has
arrived on the scene. Their plan will serve to guide people through serious
hazards when they are appropriately upset (or even in denial). (8)

Here’s the “new and improved” version of the “Seven-Step Recipe” for the
flu shot:

Step 1: Start where your audience is

Fair enough. For most educational processes, this is a good place to begin.
Officials are advised to start with empathy. Instead of “berating” people
for their lack of concern about bird flu, make “common cause with the
public” … and then talk about how “horrific the next flu pandemic may be
compared with the annual flu.”

Don’t tell them the answer; lead them to the conclusion.

Step 2: Don’t be afraid to frighten people

That’s right, the new plan advocates the use of fear. “Fear appeals have
had a bad press, but the research evidence that they work is overwhelming…..
We can't scare people enough about H5N1. WHO has been trying for over a
year, with evermore-dramatic appeals to the media, the public and member
states.”

This is the reason the “same old recipe” isn’t working: fear is an
over-played card. At every turn is a doomsday message about something
coming from the CDC and the WHO. The “Chicken Little” approach has played
itself out, even though the press and the government seem to push that same
button over and over again.

Step 3: Acknowledge uncertainty

Uncertainty is the name of the game — and it is the very uncertainty of
this infection that feeds the fear. The plan encourages officials to admit,
“There is so much that we don’t know about H5N1.”

In spite of encouraging uncertainty, there has been a noticeable change in
the language surrounding the arrival of the pandemic from “if the pandemic
comes” to “when the pandemic arrives.” (9) I suspect we may see more of
this “certainty” once the new pandemic vaccine becomes available worldwide.

Step 4: Share dilemmas

In crisis communication, the goal of dilemma sharing is “to humanize
theorganization” making the decision, “reducing the outrage if you turn out
to bewrong.” In addition, this practice will let the public think that it
is helping to make decisions, leading to “better buy-in” of the decisions
being made.

I wonder if the farmers in Vietnam, China and Thailand are feeling any
sense of “dilemma sharing” when their birds — infected or not — are
confiscated by the government and killed, leading to a complete loss of
income and food production for their families?

Step 5: Give people something to do

In January 2005, Canadian infectious diseases expert Richard Schabas told
The Wall Street Journal, "Scaring people about avian influenza accomplishes
nothing because we're not asking people to do anything about it." The
authors of the new playbook recommend that we start planning how to handle
catastrophic business disruptions. They even suggest “cognitive and
emotional rehearsal — learning about H5N1 and thinking about what a
pandemic might be like and how you’d cope.”

Nearly every religious tradition and many researchers, including Depak
Chopra, Larry Dossey and Wayne Dyer, have given us a clear message: “You
get what you think about.” Could global cognitive and emotional rehearsals
make the situation worse? Perhaps we should visualize, instead, a safe,
clean healthy world, free of viral illnesses for all, humans, birds and
animals.

Step 6. Be willing to speculate — responsibly

Step 7: Don’t get caught in the numbers game

Step 8: Stress magnitude more than probability

Step 9: Guide the adjustment reaction

All four of these steps serve to accentuate Step 2: Don’t be afraid to
frighten people. Get people revved up and worried. Get them motivated to
fear that the pandemic is coming. Stockpile drugs, frantically push for
vaccines, store water and food. We didn’t see a disaster at the millennium,
but one is just around the corner. At any minute. Soon. We’re due.

Step 10: Inform the public early and aim for total candor and transparency

The American government has collaborated with its many agencies to hide so
many things from its citizens — from vaccine cover-ups about thimerosal to
Vioxx — that it has lost all sense of trustworthiness. Do government
officials still have the ability to be “transparent”?

Now that we have seen the new playbook, start watching for the rhetoric.
The bird flu vaccine to “protect” the public from the H5N1 virus is more
than a year away from release. Nonetheless, watch for the 2005/06 “normal”
flu season to be the launching pad for a new form of information sharing
called “risk communication.” See the plays unfold, paving the way for the
arrival of a new “bird flu” shot. A global mass vaccination program plan is
about to unfold.

REFERENCES:

1. “Annual number of flu deaths: It’s a guess” can be read here
2. The CDC’s full plan and commentary can be read in “The Flu Season
Campaign Begins” here
3. SARS fatalities. NationMaster.com at
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/hea_sar_fat
4. SARS fatalities. NationMaster.com at
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/hea_sar_fat
5. Preparing for the Next Pandemic by Michael T. Osterholm. Foreign
Affairs, July/August 2005.
6. Ibid. Osterholm. Also see:
7. The Next Pandemic? By Laurie Garrett. Foreign Affairs. July/August
2005. www.foreignaffairs.org
8. Bird Flu: Communicating the Risks, by Peter Sandman and Jody Lanard.
Perspectives in Health, Vol 10, No 2. 2005.
http://www.paho.org/english/DD/PIN/N...2_article1.htm
9. Monto, A.S. The role of antivirals in the control of influenza.
Vaccine. 2003 May 1:21(16) 796-800 PMID: 12686097

Sherri J. Tenpenny received her medical training at Kirksville College of
Osteopathic Medicine in Kirksville, Missouri. She is board certified in
emergency medicine and osteopathic manipulative medicine, and is a
respected expert in the area of integrative and alternative medicine.

BTW, when I saw the TV clips of Asians spraying their chicken coops to "kill" the bird flu virus,
WHAT were they using in the spray ? Dettol? Yogurt? Soap solution for
the birds to clean their claws with after they had been to the bathroom?
Did you feel that the WHO containment plan was making you feel safer?
Sad, isn't it?

On Fri, 30 Dec 2005 18:45:45 +0000
Sheri Nakken <homeopathycures@tesco.net> wrote:

> Throw Out the Playbook: A New Plan Arrives
>
> http://www.redflagsdaily.com/articles/2005_sep12.php
> (viewable with subscription only - please considering joining to support
> their wonderful effort to get the truth out)
>

At 03:59 PM 12/31/2005 -0500, you wrote:
>BTW, when I saw the TV clips of Asians spraying their chicken coops to
"kill" the bird flu virus,
>WHAT were they using in the spray ? Dettol? Yogurt? Soap solution for
>the birds to clean their claws with after they had been to the bathroom?

We wish!

Probably the usual - malathion or similar like used to spray mosquitos and
actually causes WNV type illness
or like DDT which was used everywhere that probably is what caused
poliomyelitis

>Did you feel that the WHO containment plan was making you feel safer?
>Sad, isn't it?

Its more than sad, it is criminal and tragic
Thanks


>
>On Fri, 30 Dec 2005 18:45:45 +0000
>Sheri Nakken <homeopathycures@tesco.net> wrote:
>
>> Throw Out the Playbook: A New Plan Arrives
>>
>> http://www.redflagsdaily.com/articles/2005_sep12.php
>> (viewable with subscription only - please considering joining to support
>> their wonderful effort to get the truth out)
>>
>
>