Peter M. Sandman Video and Audio
Risk Communication Materials
This page lists all my video and audio risk communication materials – a convenient resource for people who are looking for something to play for a group, or who would rather watch and listen than read.
I have a big stack of video and audio recordings – mostly of client presentations – that are not currently online. Over time, I plan to sort through these and post the ones that I think add the most value (and that don’t reveal client confidences). I’ll also try to add new ones when I do a presentation or give an interview that covers material not already covered. I have been far too print-focused for far too long.
Topical Sections in
the Video and Audio List
The list is not organized chronologically, as the other content lists on this website are. Instead, it is organized by topic. And within each topic area, it is in order of my best guess at what people are going to want to watch or listen to – with the most valuable selections for each topic area at the top, and the “just in case you’re interested” ones at the bottom.
Introduction and Orientation
Risk=Hazard+Outrage: Some Risk Communication Basics (and some COVID comments) – 2024 Edition
Class presented via Zoom to Prof. Michael Osterholm’s course on “Emerging Infectious Diseases: Current Issues, Policies and Controversies,” University of Minnesota School of Public Health, February 5, 2024
Prof. Mike Osterholm of the University of Minnesota Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy periodically asks me to give a Zoom class on risk communication for his School of Public Health graduate course on “Emerging Infectious Diseases.” I previously posted the March 21, 2022 “edition.” You can access the video, audio, and slide set there.
This is the February 5, 2024 edition. The main difference is this time I got permission to include an audio of the 83-minute Q&A that followed my presentation. This Q&A pretty much ignored my hazard-versus-outrage basics and focused on what went wrong in COVID risk communication. The class reading assignment had included two of my pre-COVID articles on public health dishonesty (here and here), so there was discussion of that topic too. I recorded the Q&A on my phone, so my answers are clear but the students’ questions are barely audible.
Another difference: This time I'm also posting Zoom’s machine transcript of the presentation, for those who’d rather read than watch or listen.
The content of the Q&A is new, of course, but the presentation itself is mostly my trademark explanation of the distinction between hazard and outrage and the resulting paradigms of risk communication: precaution advocacy, outrage management, crisis communication, and public participation. Along the way and at the very end I commented on COVID implications of the various paradigms … a little of which did change between 2022 and 2024.
Risk = Hazard + Outrage: Some Risk Communication Basics (and some COVID comments)
Class presented via Zoom to Prof. Michael Osterholm’s course on “Emerging Infectious Diseases: Current Issues, Policies and Controversies,” University of Minnesota School of Public Health, March 21, 2022.
Michael Osterholm of the University of Minnesota Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy periodically asks me to give a Zoom class on risk communication for his School of Public Health course on emerging infectious diseases. The most recent one on March 21, 2022 was recorded (except for the wonderful Q&A) – so here it is.
It’s mostly my trademark presentation on the distinction between hazard and outrage and the resulting paradigms of risk communication: precaution advocacy, outrage management, crisis communication, and public participation (stakeholder consultation). Along the way and at the very end I commented briefly on COVID risk communication.
Looking Back: Tracing How I Got to My Approach to Risk Communication
Interview via Zoom with Margaret Harvie and Lewis Michaelson, April 27, 2023
In early March 2023, Australian friend and colleague Margaret Harvie asked me to sit for a Zoom interview on the history of my approach to risk communication. She said she and Lewis Michaelson were doing a series of such interviews for the International Association for Public Participation (IAP2) with “creators of some of the IAP2 products,” focusing on “what was happening at the time that led to [their] thinking.” The result was a 66-minute three-way April 27 interview, a chance for me to talk my way through how I got into risk communication, how I came up with “Hazard versus Outrage,” how I think outrage management relates to public participation, and related topics. I also spent some time at the end outlining some of the ways risk communication can be subdivided: precaution advocacy versus outrage management versus crisis communication versus “the sweet spot”; education versus persuasion; stakeholder relations versus public relations versus government relations etc.; and support mobilization versus public relations versus outrage management.
Risk = Hazard + Outrage: Three Paradigms of (Radiation) Risk Communication
Webinar presented via Zoom to the “Web Symposium on Risk Communication in Radiation Disaster,” Fukushima Medical University, February 7, 2022 (presentation prerecorded on December 16, 2021)
This is my basic introduction to risk communication, focusing on the distinction between hazard and outrage and the three paradigms of risk communication resulting from that distinction – plus a fourth paradigm, stakeholder consultation when hazard and outrage are both intermediate. The occasional references to radiation-specific issues are brief, as is the Q&A at the end. I do like the slides on radiation-related uses for each paradigm. Also, the video is higher-quality technically than the other Zoom videos I have posted. Since the symposium sponsor has posted the video on YouTube, I’m linking to it there instead of uploading it to Vimeo as usual.
Risk = Hazard + Outrage: Three Paradigms of (Wildfire) Risk Communication
Webinar presented via Zoom, hosted by the European Forest Institute, November 15, 2021
In July 2021, the European Forest Institute started putting together a risk communication course, to be offered in November for wildfire management doctoral students throughout Europe (and a few from elsewhere). I agreed to give the November 15 keynote (via Zoom). At EFI’s request, I kept the keynote generic. Applying my principles to wildfire risk communication challenges would be the students’ task, I was told, not mine. So only the last minute or two of my 45-minute presentation has anything to do with wildfires, plus the 25-minute Q&A that followed.
The presentation itself focuses on the hazard-versus-outrage distinction and the three risk communication paradigms that follow from that distinction – plus a fourth paradigm I don’t always talk about, public consultation when both hazard and outrage are intermediate. I didn’t break any new ground here, but this is a pretty good, pretty short introduction to the basics of my approach. And I think the 25-minute Q&A is excellent.
Pesticide Outrage Management – Part 1
Webinar presented via Zoom to the Region One Pesticide Inspector Regional Training (PIRT) program of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, February 23, 2021
I came out of retirement in January 2020 to try to help with the COVID pandemic. I wasn’t interested in any other work. But in early 2021, I was asked to do a two-hour Zoom training seminar for pesticide managers on how to cope with pesticide safety controversies. I thought it would be a nice change of pace from the pandemic, so I said yes.
This is Part 1, 56 minutes long, devoted mostly to the basics of risk communication: the distinction between hazard and outrage and the three paradigms of risk communication resulting from that distinction. Toward the end I focus on the paradigm most relevant to pesticide controversies, outrage management – beginning with some thoughts on how to stay empathetic in high-stress situations. Part 2 (65 minutes) is listed here, including more on outrage management and some Q&A on pesticide outrage management in particular.
The training was sponsored by the Region One Pesticide Inspector Regional Training (PIRT) program of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. It was organized and hosted by the Pesticide Management Program of the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection.
Introduction to Risk Communication
Presented to the New South Wales Environment Protection Authority, Sydney
Australia, February 2, 2016
This three-hour video (and audio) is the entire first morning of a 1–1/2-day risk communication seminar I presented in February 2016 for the New South Wales Environment Protection Authority. GHD, an Australia-based engineering and environmental consulting firm, brought me to Australia for this and other events.
The video covers the same ground as the first half-day of my September 2010 risk communication seminar for the Rio Tinto mining company, listed below under the title “Outrage Management Course.” There are differences, but they’re very minor given that a half-decade had passed and this time I was talking to a regulatory agency instead of a mining company. Watch whichever one you prefer.
Other environmental regulators from throughout Australia were also invited to attend the EPA seminar, courtesy of the Australasian Environmental Law Enforcement and Regulators Network (AELERT), which videotaped the first morning. AELERT also made three edited segments based on the raw footage. Two are available in video and audio, and one just in audio. Choose either the unedited tape (inaudible questions and all) or the three edited segments. (There is no edited segment covering the last part of the morning on the three risk communication “games.”)
1. The Unedited Tape
Here's a rough time breakdown of the unedited tape:
| 0:00 – 0:21 | Various introductions, agenda review, etc. |
| 0:21 – 1:07 | Risk = Hazard + Outrage |
| 1:07 – 1:27 | Sample Outrage Assessment: Genetically Modified Foods |
| 1:27 – 1:39 | Risk = Hazard + Outrage (continued) |
| 1:39 – 2:38 | Three Paradigms of Risk Communication: Precaution Advocacy,
Outrage Management, and Crisis Communication |
| 2:38 – 3:02 | Three Risk Communication “Games”: Follow-the-Leader, Donkey, and Seesaw |
2. Risk = Hazard + Outrage
This material runs 58 minutes in the unedited tape; AELERT edited it down to a 30-minute audio "podcast" on the basics of the hazard-versus-outrage concept.
3. Predicting Outrage: A GM Food Case Study
The 20-minute “Sample Outrage Assessment” segment in the unedited tape was
edited down just a bit to 17 minutes, with some added slides and cutaways.
4. Three Different Types of Risk Communication
The 59-minute segment in the unedited tape runs 37 minutes in AELERT’s edit, with some added slides and cutaways. Based on the “hazard versus outrage” distinction, the segment identifies three key risk communication paradigms:
- Precaution advocacy (high-hazard, low-outrage)
- Outrage management (low-hazard, high-outrage)
- Crisis communication (high-hazard, high-outrage)
- Most of the video focuses on outrage management.
Outrage Management Course
Presented to the Rio Tinto mining company, Brisbane, Australia, September 16–17, 2010
The clips below are from the first half-day of the two-day course, and constitute a broad introduction to risk communication. Later clips focus specifically on outrage management.
1. Risk = Hazard + Outrage
This video clip outlines the fundamental distinction between a risk’s “hazard” (how much harm it’s likely to do) and its “outrage” (how upset it’s likely to make people). The selection emphasizes that both hazard perception and hazard response result more from outrage than from hazard.
Two short excerpts from this clip have been posted on YouTube (more or less as advertisements for the clip, and the course as a whole).
2. Components of Outrage and a Sample Outrage Assessment
This video clip runs through the twelve principal components of outrage (voluntary versus coerced, natural versus industrial, etc.). Then it illustrates these components with a seat-of-the-pants “outrage assessment” of genetically modified food.
3. Three Paradigms of Risk Communication
This video clip outlines the three main paradigms of risk communication: precaution advocacy (when hazard is high and outrage is low); outrage management (when hazard is low and outrage is high); and crisis communication (when hazard and outrage are both high).
4. Three Risk Communication “Games”
This video clip describes three risk communication “games”: follow-the-leader (when you’re talking to an audience with no prior opinion); donkey (when you’re talking to an audience whose prior opinion you’re trying to change); and above all
seesaw (when your audience is ambivalent, torn between the opinion you’re championing and an opposing opinion).
Three Paradigms of Risk Communication – and a critique of COVID-19 Crisis Communication
Webinar presented via Zoom, then posted on YouTube, hosted by the Institute for Risk and Uncertainty, University of Liverpool, July 7, 2021
In April 2021, the University of Liverpool Institute for Risk and Uncertainty asked me to give a presentation in its monthly webinar series. We agreed I would divide my time between my “signature risk communication formula” and my criticisms of the way COVID-19 has been communicated. And on July 7 that’s what I did. The first third of this 94-minute webinar is introductory, my “Risk = Hazard + Outrage” formula and the three risk communication paradigms I derive from the formula. The second third is my critique of COVID-19 crisis communication, mostly in the U.S. The final third is Q&A and discussion, much of it focusing on COVID-19 risk communication dilemmas in the U.K.
My hosts promptly posted the webinar on YouTube, as they always do. That link is below. Also below is an audio-only recording of the webinar and my slide set, so you’re free to follow along on your own if you prefer.
Communicating Risk: Neglected and Controversial Rules of Thumb
Presented at the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Georgia, Athens GA, October 16, 2013
In October 2013, I spent three days at the University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication. The main agenda was to negotiate a possible “Sandman Archive” of my papers and web materials, an initiative of the new Grady program in health and risk communication. (See “Working Toward a Legacy.”) But while I was there I also gave a number of class presentations and one public presentation, which was videotaped. I offered my hosts a choice of half a dozen presentation topics, and they asked me to combine them all into a potpourri of interesting risk communication pointers. So this video is different from most of the introductory videos I have posted. It’s got a little of everything. There’s a quick summary of “Risk = Hazard + Outrage” and my three paradigms of risk communication (my usual introductory shtick). But there’s also a discussion of why information is rarely life-changing and why cognitive dissonance can make it so; of why it’s important to be willing to speculate and to be willing to scare people; and of the need for public health professionals to tell the whole truth about vaccination. As I said: a potpourri.
Peter Sandman: How Your Ability To Process Risk Can Save Your Life
Interview with Chris Martenson of Peak Prosperity, podcast posted July 7,
2020
Chris Martenson’s “Peak Prosperity” YouTube channel currently claims 368,000 subscribers. Chris is best known for his “Crash Course” on how pretty much everything is in rapid decline. In 2020, not surprisingly, he has posted dozens of videos on COVID-19. One of these, posted in March, was devoted entirely to my 2005 article on the adjustment reaction concept. Entitled “Coronavirus: How To Inform Your Friends & Family Without Creating Pushback,” 
it got 330,000 views and 4,428 comments in three months – way out of my league.
So when Chris said he wanted to interview me via Zoom for an hour-long podcast, I said yes. We did it on June 29. Chris wanted to talk (again!) about adjustment reactions. I wanted to talk (again) about the basics of risk communication. We both wanted to talk about the ways the U.S. is mismanaging the COVID-19 pandemic. So we did all three. Our COVID-19 discussion focused mostly on a risk communication analysis, but we inevitably veered into risk management and epidemiology as well.
“Communicating Risk in the Media”
Aired on Australian Broadcasting Corporation's “Media Report” radio program and posted on its website, August 28, 2014
“Quick Orientation to Risk Communication“
Interview with Peter Sandman by Richard Aedy, August 11, 2014
Richard Aedy interviewed me for Australian radio via telephone for 20 minutes on August 11. The edited 11:40 interview aired on August 28, a few days before I started a speaking and consulting tour of Australia. There’s nothing special about this interview, except the fact that it’s recent and short. We covered the usual basics: the hazard-versus-outrage distinction, the three paradigms of risk communication, etc. Like many media interviewers, Richard was especially interested in whether risk communication is really just a different label for “spin,” and in what I think about the performance of the media. (In fairness, he asked about social media as well as mainstream media.) As always, I prefer the longer or more idiosyncratic interviews. But this one is a sensible quick orientation.
Quantitative Risk Communication: Explaining the Data
Produced by the American Industrial Hygiene Association, 1994
In my approach to risk communication, explaining the data is secondary; addressing outrage – raising it, reducing it, or helping people cope with it – is what’s crucial. Nonetheless, the time comes in most risk communication efforts when you’ve got to explain the data. This studio-produced 1994 video focuses on three key aspects of quantitative risk communication:
- Motivation – getting people to want to understand the data
- Simplification – making the data understandable
- Orientation – keeping people from getting lost
There’s also some discussion of how to address uncertainty and how to handle risk comparisons.
(This video was produced in 1994 by the American Industrial Hygiene Association. It went out of print in 2007. With AIHA’s permission, the entire video is now available free of charge online.)
Atomic Show #205 – Peter Sandman teaches nuclear communicators
Podcast for the “Atomic Insights” website, May 31, 2013 (with Rod Adams, Margaret Harding, Meredith Angwin, and Suzy Hobbs-Baker)
Rod Adams runs a website called “Atomic Insights” that promotes nuclear power. In early May 2013 he discovered my approach to outrage management, and put posts on his own website and on an American Nuclear Society website urging nuclear power proponents to learn outrage management. The responses to his two posts led Rod to invite me to do this podcast.
The podcast itself runs 1 hour and 42 minutes. Most of it is a basic introduction to risk communication and then to outrage management: the hazard-versus-outrage distinction, the components of outrage, the three paradigms of risk communication, the key strategies of outrage management, etc. But I did try to focus especially on what the nuclear power industry and its supporters get wrong – for example, imagining that their core communication mistake is failing to sell their strengths effectively, whereas I believe it is failing to acknowledge their problems candidly. There are recommendations for nuclear communication throughout the podcast, and a Q&A at the end with Rod and fellow proponents Margaret Harding, Meredith Angwin, and Suzy Hobbs-Baker. The plan is to follow up with a second podcast, a more narrowly focused roundtable discussion among the five of us on nuclear power outrage management.
Terrorists vs. Bathtubs
(Edited) interview with Peter Sandman by Brooke Gladstone, June 20, 2013
Aired on National Public Radio’s “On the Media” and posted on its website, June 21, 2013
Risk Communication in Practice
(Complete) interview with Peter Sandman by Brooke Gladstone, June 20, 2013
Brooke Gladstone of “On the Media” interviewed me in my home for 49 minutes. We started out talking about claims by opponents of NSA telephone and email surveillance (in the wake of the Edward Snowden leaks) that “more people have died from [whatever] than from terrorism” – and why these sorts of risk comparisons are unlikely to be convincing. That soon got me to the distinction between hazard and outrage. But Brooke didn’t let me do my usual hazard-versus-outrage introductory shtick. Instead, she kept asking for specifics – examples of how precaution advocacy and outrage management strategies work in practice. Toward the end of the interview, she pushed me to shoot from the hip about applications I hadn’t thought through: How would I use risk communication to defend government surveillance? To oppose it? To defend shale gas “fracking”? To oppose that? The interview that resulted is a different sort of introduction to risk communication than the one I usually give. The 10-minute broadcast segment is nicely edited; it’s very smooth and covers most of my main points. But I prefer the roughness and detail of the complete interview.
Risk Communication in Healthcare Settings Podcasts
Taped for the British Columbia (Canada) Provincial Health Services Authority and Vancouver Coastal Health, February 15, 2011
This was a 50-minute telephone interview later divided into four podcasts. Although the intended audience was healthcare managers, the first two podcasts barely mention healthcare, and are really generic. The third and fourth podcasts focus more on healthcare examples, and are listed below in the “Infectious Diseases” section.
1. Introduction to Risk Communication
This audio clip distinguishes the terms “risk communication,” “risk assessment,” and “crisis communication”; describes the fundamental risk communication distinction between hazard and outrage; and uses that distinction to define the three paradigms of risk communication. It ends with a discussion of how to measure outrage.
2. Three Paradigms of Risk Communication
This audio clip discusses some key strategies associated with each of the three paradigms of risk communication: precaution advocacy (high hazard, low outrage), outrage management (low hazard, high outrage), and crisis communication (high hazard, high outrage). It emphasizes the need to assess – and continually reassess – which paradigm is called for by the specific communication environment you face.
Interview with Dr. Peter Sandman
by Andrew Findlater
Posted on the National Public Relations website, March 9, 2009
Note: This is the shortest audio introduction to my approach to risk communication. Naturally I prefer the longer ones.
Canadian PR firm National Public Relations was one of the sponsors that brought me to Vancouver in March 2009 to give a two-day risk communication seminar (jointly with my wife and colleague Jody Lanard), organized by the University of British Columbia. As part of the event, the company taped this seven-minute interview with me on the basics of my “Risk = Hazard + Outrage” formula. The tape was posted (and labeled a “podcast”) on the National Public Relations website, and the link was emailed to conference participants and National Public Relations clients. It’s no longer on the National Public Relations site, so I have posted it here.
Food Safety Risk Communications
Presented at the Maple Leaf Food Safety Symposium, Mississauga Canada, October 23, 2009
Note: This audio clip covers much the same ground as the Rio Tinto video clips listed above – but of course it’s much, much shorter and less detailed.
In August 2008, Listeria contamination in Maple Leaf packaged deli meats killed 21 elderly consumers, one of the largest food poisoning disasters in Canadian history. As one small part of its recovery efforts, Maple Leaf Foods sponsored a food safety symposium in October 2009, bringing together producers, retailers, and regulators to talk about lessons learned and ways to protect against Listeria. My presentation on “Food Safety Risk Communication” was inserted as respite from the technical material in most of the other speeches. I did my usual introduction to hazard versus outrage and the kinds of risk communication, and then offered a few food-specific examples (until I ran out of time). Audience comments and questions weren’t recorded; that’s what the occasional moments of dead air are.
Fundamentals of risk communication: How to talk to patients and the public about pandemic H1N1
Presented to the European Respiratory Society international conference, Vienna, Austria, September 14, 2009
Note: This audio clip covers much the same ground as the Rio Tinto video clips listed above – but of course it’s much, much shorter and less detailed.
The European Respiratory Society invited me give a 20-minute presentation on pandemic communication at its annual conference, as part of a panel on various aspects of pandemic H1N1. I pleaded for an extra hour right afterwards to go into more detail for those who wanted it. Some 20,000 respiratory disease doctors attended the conference; roughly 2,000 of them were at the panel; about 200 followed me to a smaller room for my extra hour (which I did jointly with my wife and colleague Jody Lanard, an M.D.). Only the panel presentation is posted on the ERS website. It’s mostly an introduction to the basics of risk communication (hazard versus outrage; precaution advocacy versus outrage management versus crisis communication), with some quick comments on the implications for pandemic communication. The meat was in the hour that followed, which unfortunately wasn’t recorded.
Three Paradigms of Radiological Risk Communication: Alerting, Reassuring, Guiding
Presented to the National Public Health Information Coalition, Miami Beach FL, October 21, 2009
Although this six-hour seminar was entitled “Three Paradigms of Radiological Risk Communication,” NPHIC asked me to go easy on the “radiological” part and give participants a broad introduction to my approach to risk communication, mentioning radiation issues from time to time. So that’s what I did.
Fair warning: These are not professional videos. NPHIC member Joe Rebele put a camera in the back of the room and let it run. You won’t lose much listening to the MP3 audio files on this site instead.
- Part One (90 min.)
Despite its poor production values, Part One is a decent introduction to the hazard-versus-outrage distinction and the three paradigms of risk communication.
- Part Two (155 min.)
If you’re interested, Part Two starts with 20 minutes or so on the seesaw and other risk communication games (thus completing the introductory segment). The rest of Part Two spends a little over an hour each on some key strategies of precaution advocacy and outrage management.
- Part Three (72 min.)
Part Three is devoted to strategies of crisis communication.
Precaution Advocacy
Three Paradigms of Radiological Risk Communication: Alerting, Reassuring, Guiding
Presented to the National Public Health Information Coalition, Miami Beach FL, October 21, 2009
Although this six-hour seminar was entitled “Three Paradigms of Radiological Risk Communication,” NPHIC asked me to go easy on the “radiological” part and give participants a broad introduction to my approach to risk communication, mentioning radiation issues from time to time. So that’s what I did.
Fair warning: These are not professional videos. NPHIC member Joe Rebele put a camera in the back of the room and let it run. You won’t lose much listening to the MP3 audio files on this site instead.
- Part Two (155 min.)
Despite its poor production values, Part Two includes a little over an hour on some key strategies of precaution advocacy. It’s preceded by about 20 minutes on the seesaw and other risk communication games, and followed by an hour or so on outrage management strategies. I have better videos posted on the games and on outrage management, but until I find a better segment to post on precaution advocacy, this one is better than nothing.
- Part One (90 min.)
If you’re interested, Part One is an introduction to the hazard-versus-outrage distinction and the three paradigms of risk communication.
- Part Three (72 min.)
Part Three is devoted to strategies of crisis communication.
Talking to the Public about Emergency Preparedness
Interview with Peter M. Sandman by Marisa Raphael, New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, February 27, 2014
Marisa Raphael is Deputy Commissioner at the Office of Emergency Preparedness and Response of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. She is also participating in the National Preparedness Leadership Institute (NPLI) at Harvard University. On February 27, 2014, she interviewed me for an hour by telephone on behalf of an NPLI project on ways to improve emergency preparedness communications with the general public. Although we spent a little time at the end of the interview covering some basics for communicating mid-crisis, we stuck mostly to pre-crisis communication, a kind of precaution advocacy. We covered two main topics. First we talked about why it’s so hard to build citizen support for government emergency preparedness expenditures, and what kind of messaging strategies are likeliest to lead to such support. Then we switched to a more conventional topic: how to motivate people to do their own personal, family, or neighborhood emergency preparedness.
Scaring People: The Uses and Limitations of Fear Appeals
Part One of a two-part interview with Peter M. Sandman by George Whitney of Complete EM, July 22, 2016.
George Whitney runs an emergency management consulting company called Complete EM. His website features a blog and a podcast series. On July 22, 2016 he interviewed me by phone for nearly two hours. He edited the interview into two podcasts, which he entitled “Dr. Peter Sandman – Risk Communication” and “Dr. Peter Sandman – Crisis Communication.” I have given them new titles.
This interview segment isn’t really about emergency management or crisis communication at all. It’s about pre-crisis communication – a part of what I call precaution advocacy. When he briefed me for the interview, George had told me he wanted to focus on fear appeals. He thought emergency management professionals relied too much on fear in their warnings about earthquakes and other natural disasters, and he wanted to know whether I agreed. So for the first 45 minutes or so we talked about the uses and limitations of fear appeals. At the end of what became Part One of George’s two-part podcast, he asked me to reflect on what had changed in my 40+ years as a risk communication consultant. I cited two big changes: the slow migration from craft to science, and the growing understanding of what it takes to calm people who are more upset about some risk than you think they should be. (Part Two is “Crisis Communication for Emergency Managers.”)
Are E-Cigs a Crisis? It’s Risky to Call Them ‘Unsafe’
by Faye Flam
Posted on the Bloomberg Opinion website, June 3, 2019
The U.S. Public Health Establishment Risks Scaring People into Smoking
Interview with Peter Sandman by Faye Flam, May 28, 2019
I am very nearly retired, but when Bloomberg commentator Faye Flam asked to interview me about e-cigarettes, I couldn’t resist saying yes. I have been highly critical of how the U.S. public health establishment smears e-cigs at least since 2015, when I posted “A Promising Candidate for Most Dangerously Dishonest Public Health News Release of the Year.” Precaution advocacy often exaggerates, and I am used to hyperbolic public health warnings about, say, the dangers of vaccine-preventable diseases. But such warnings can save lives even if they’re less than honest, which some say justifies the dishonesty. Warnings about e-cigs, on the other hand, could convince people that they might just as well smoke instead – a profound disservice if, as seems likely, vaping is an order of magnitude safer than smoking. Faye’s article is based on more than just her interview with me, and the interview has a lot of information she didn’t use in the article. So you might want to check out both.
(In the same interview, Faye also asked me about the failed Dengvaxia vaccine campaign in the Philippines. I’ll post that part of the interview with a link to her Dengvaxia article if she writes one.)
When It’s Okay for Health Officials to Panic, and When It’s Not
by Faye Flam
Posted on the Bloomberg Opinion website, October 6, 2019
Honest versus Dishonest Teachable Moments in Public Health Warnings
Interview with Peter Sandman by Faye Flam, September 24, 2019
Dishonest E-Cig Warnings and the Ethics of Health Scares
Two emails from Peter M. Sandman to Faye Flam, September 11 and September 13, 2019
In May 2019, Bloomberg reporter Faye Flam interviewed me 
for a story on e-cigarette risk communication – and my view that the public health establishment has been dishonestly alarmist about vaping, so much so that it risks scaring people into smoking instead. On September 10, 2019, she emailed me to ask about a follow-up interview. We exchanged a few emails about whether Bloomberg would let her write another “pro-vaping” article, given Michael Bloomberg’s fervent opposition. So we started emailing back and forth about “health scares” more generically. Two of my emails to Faye strike me as worth posting: one on September 11 about the recent spate of lung injuries linked to vaping (especially vaping illegal marijuana); the other on September 13 about when it is or isn’t appropriate for public health officials to try to frighten the public. Our eventual September 24 interview dealt largely with e-cigs but also addressed some other health scares (bird flu, equine encephalitis, red meat, climate change), as did her resulting October 6 article. The interview, of course, is a lot more detailed than the very brief article.
This was a 48-minute telephone interview with Stephen Dubner, for a Freakonomics Radio program (and podcast) on climate change. The interview never made it into the program/podcast, but excerpts were added to the Freakonomics website on November 29, 2011. The first 17 minutes of the interview are generic – Risk Communication 101, basically. The rest is grounded mostly in my 2009 column on “Climate Change Risk Communication: The Problem of Psychological Denial,” though Dubner periodically pushed me to speculate on new aspects of the topic. My main argument: Climate change risk communicators are good at informing and scaring apathetic people, but need an entirely different strategy – something more like outrage management – for people who are in denial about climate change.
Radio reporter Jason Margolis of “The World” attended a conference of global climate change skeptics, decided they were more deniers than actual skeptics, and ended up with a 10-minute story on climate change denial. I was one of several experts he quoted to explore the reasons why so many people have trouble facing the threat of global warming. In our interview, I focused on some ways activist communications may unwittingly encourage audience denial. Jason used the part on guilt – on why telling people their lifestyle is destroying the earth may not be the best way to inspire them to action. My views are elaborated further in a 2009 column on “Climate Change Risk Communication: The Problem of Psychological Denial.”
Interview with Peter M. Sandman by Marco Werman, aired on “The World” on PRI (Public Radio International) and posted on its website, September 27, 2013
When the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its new report – claiming more certainty than ever before that the global warming threat is dire – Marco Werman of PRI’s “The World” interviewed me about why I thought many people might find the report’s conclusions hard to accept, and might go into a kind of psychological denial instead. The interview lasted about ten minutes, but was cut to less than five for airing. I made too many minor points that got used, albeit in abbreviated form. So my main point got almost completely lost – that climate change activists were their own worst enemies because they kept saying things that were likely to provoke or deepen people’s denial instead of things that could help people overcome their denial. For example, I told Marco, too many environmentalists were greeting the IPCC’s bad news triumphantly, almost gleefully – sounding more pleased that they were being proved right than devastated that the world’s in deep trouble. People who like their SUVs and are having a hard time accepting that they may have to give up their SUVs (that’s a kind of denial) may just barely be able to believe it if a fellow SUV fan sadly tells them so. They’re not about to believe it if it’s exultantly announced by someone who has hated the internal combustion engine since before global climate change was even an issue. For several better explanations of my thinking about climate change denial, see any of the other entries with “climate” and/or “denial” in their titles in the “On Environmental Activism” section of my Precaution Advocacy index.
Webinar presented via Zoom to the Region One Pesticide Inspector Regional Training (PIRT) program of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, February 23, 2021
I came out of retirement in January 2020 to try to help with the COVID pandemic. I wasn’t interested in any other work. But in early 2021, I was asked to do a two-hour Zoom training seminar for pesticide managers on how to cope with pesticide safety controversies. I thought it would be a nice change of pace from the pandemic, so I said yes.
Part 1, 56 minutes long, is devoted mostly to the basics of risk communication: the distinction between hazard and outrage and the three paradigms of risk communication resulting from that distinction. Toward the end I focus on the paradigm most relevant to pesticide controversies, outrage management – beginning with some thoughts on how to stay empathetic in high-stress situations. Part 2 (65 minutes) includes more on outrage management and some Q&A on pesticide outrage management in particular.
The training was sponsored by the Region One Pesticide Inspector Regional Training (PIRT) program of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. It was organized and hosted by the Pesticide Management Program of the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection.
Presented to the Rio Tinto mining company, Brisbane, Australia, September 16–17, 2010
In September 2010 I did a two-day outrage management seminar in Brisbane, Australia for the Rio Tinto mining company. With the company’s permission, I edited out all references to specific Rio Tinto controversies, and arranged what was left into a coherent sequence of twelve clips, starting with the basic “Risk = Hazard + Outrage” formula and ending with the organizational barriers to following the outrage management principles. Clips #1, #3, and #4 are listed in the “Introduction and Orientation“ section. All twelve are listed in sequence in my “Peter Sandman on Risk Communication” channel on Vimeo.
This 111-minute video sold briskly for more than 20 years until the American Industrial Hygiene Association stopped distributing it in January 2012. Now it’s available for free on Vimeo (video) and on this site (audio). Unlike many of my videos, this one was professionally produced in a studio, with multiple cameras and an actual set. Although my standard spiel has changed some since 1991, everything here is still true and still useful. The video is especially valuable for its detailed discussion of the 12 principal outrage components 
and how to deal with them. These days I talk more about generic outrage management strategies, and less about these component-specific strategies. (Note that I’m using the original files from the AIHA DVD; some of the “parts” begin and end arbitrarily.)
- Part One (17:10)
-
Part One introduces the distinction between hazard and outrage, and explains my signature formula, “Risk = Hazard + Outrage.”
- Part Two (17:10)
-
Part Two discusses three components of outrage (and part of a fourth) and what to do about them: voluntary versus coerced; natural versus industrial; familiar versus exotic; and memorable versus not memorable.
- Part Three (12:00)
-
Part Three continues my discussion of the 12 principal components of outrage and what to do about them. This segment discusses risks that are not memorable versus memorable, not dreaded versus dreaded, and chronic versus catastrophic.
- Part Four (33:26)
-
Part Four covers six more outrage components and what to do about each: knowable versus unknowable; controlled by me versus controlled by others; fair versus unfair; morally irrelevant versus morally relevant; trustworthy versus not trustworthy; and responsive versus not responsive. (The last one is finished in Part Five.)
- Part Five (31:27)
-
Part Five finishes the discussion of responsive process versus unresponsive process, the last of my 12 principal outrage components. Then it briefly addresses eight additional outrage components. Finally, I draw seven conclusions about risk communication in low-hazard, high-outrage controversies.
Implementing Risk Communication: Overcoming the Barriers
Produced by the American Industrial Hygiene Association, Fairfax VA, 1994
When people are excessively concerned about a small risk, the biggest problem isn’t figuring out what to do. It’s getting your company or agency to do it. After a six-minute introduction, this video is devoted to three kinds of barriers to implementation … and ways to overcome them:
- Cognitive barriers (34 minutes) – the “yes buts” that organizations give as their reasons for not moving forward.
- Organizational barriers (18 minutes) – the characteristics of organizations that actually keep them from moving forward.
- Psychological barriers (18 minutes) – the reasons even people who consider themselves committed may hesitate to move forward.
In 1994 I wasn’t yet routinely using the term “outrage management.” In the terminology I now use, this video is all about overcoming cognitive, organizational, and psychological barriers to outrage management.
(This video was produced in 1994 by the American Industrial Hygiene Association. It went out of print in January 2011. With AIHA’s permission, the entire video is now available free of charge online.)
If you’d rather read than watch/listen, I cover the same ground as this video in Chapters 5, 6, and 7 of my 1993 book, “Responding to Community Outrage: Strategies for Effective Risk Communication.” The book was also published and sold by AIHA, but is now available on this site without charge.
Iowa Lecture: Hazard versus Outrage; Managing Controversy; Two Kinds of Reputation Management; Public Health’s Noble Lies
Class presented via Zoom to Prof. Joanna Krajewski’s online course on “Risk Communication,” University of Iowa, April 25, 2023
Dr. Joanna Krajewski teaches an online “Risk Communication” course as part of the Master of Arts in Strategic Communication at the University of Iowa – and features my approach in a major segment of the course. So when she asked me to give a guest lecture via Zoom, I couldn’t resist. On April 25, 2023 I spent 97 minutes with her class. She asked me not to focus too much on my hazard-versus-outrage distinction and my three paradigms of risk communication, since the class had already covered that – but I still started with an overview of these basics. The rest of the class covered: the three main ways to manage a controversy (support mobilization versus public relations versus outrage management); my claim that “good reputation” and “bad reputation” are different variables and being less hated is usually more useful than being more loved; and my critique of how public health professionals do risk communication, especially their frequent resort to altruistic dishonesty (“noble lies”). The presentation was wide-ranging and so was the Q&A at the end, but I spent more time talking about outrage management than anything else, so that’s where I’m indexing this video.
Professor Peter Sandman explains his strategies for risk communication
Edited interview with Peter Sandman by Jeremy Story Carter, September 3, 2014, aired on Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s “Country Hour” radio program and posted on its website, September 9, 2014
Jeremy Story Carter interviewed me on September 3, 2014, halfway through a three-day risk communication seminar I ran in Melbourne, Australia. He let me start with the three paradigms of risk communication, and I got to squeeze in a few minutes halfway through on crisis communication (using the Ebola epidemic in West Africa as an example). But mostly Jeremy was interested in how farmers and farm industries should handle criticism, such as the recent attacks on the Australian wool industry by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). So we focused on outrage management: the importance of listening and validating people's concerns; why it’s smarter to be responsive to groups like PETA than to counterattack; how to ameliorate the outrage of moderate critics even if more extremist critics are unsatisfiable; picking which concessions to make (which battles to lose); giving credit to critics for those concessions instead of claiming to have improved on your own; and why all that is hard to do when you’re just as outraged at your critics as your critics are at you. The edited interview on the ABC website runs 19:27 minutes. Jeremy also wrote a short text story for the website, which he entitled “Farmers told to stop fighting animal welfare activists and offer PETA an olive branch: risk communication expert.”
Why Scientific Claims Rarely Help Energy Companies Manage Controversies Even When They're Right: How Companies Can Best Use Science and What They Should Mostly Do Instead
Interview with Peter M. Sandman by Jean Scandlyn of the University of Colorado Denver, September 25, 2017.
Jean Scandlyn is a professor of “Health and Behavioral Sciences and Anthropology” at the University of Colorado Denver. In September 2017 she requested a telephone interview for research on how the oil, gas, and coal industries communicate “scientific research on climate change and energy extraction” to neighbors of their operations. (She said an industry client had recommended me.) I accepted. We agreed that I would wait till December to post the interview, to make sure another interviewee wouldn’t run across it and possibly be influenced.
In the interview I made my usual case about why mistrustful stakeholders rightly don’t rely much on scientific evidence from industry sources. Most of the generic principles I applied to fossil fuel controversies can be found in “Motivating Attention: Why People Learn about Risk – or Anything Else” (2012); “Three Ways to Manage Controversies” (2016); and “Fracking Risk Communication” (2013). My two main contentions: (1) Fossil fuel companies have more to gain by addressing people’s outrage than by trying to sell them on data to show they shouldn’t be outraged in the first place; and (2) Reluctant acknowledgments by expert opponents that the companies are partly right about something carry more weight than enthusiastic endorsements by expert supporters that the companies are entirely right about everything. Along the way I told a few stories from my consulting (without naming the clients, of course).
Atomic Show #205 – Peter Sandman teaches nuclear communicators
Podcast for the “Atomic Insights” website, May 31, 2013 (with Rod Adams, Margaret Harding, Meredith Angwin, and Suzy Hobbs-Baker)
Rod Adams runs a website called “Atomic Insights” that promotes nuclear power. In early May 2013 he discovered my approach to outrage management, and put posts on his own website and on an American Nuclear Society website urging nuclear power proponents to learn outrage management. The responses to his two posts led Rod to invite me to do this podcast.
The podcast itself runs 1 hour and 42 minutes. Most of it is a basic introduction to risk communication and then to outrage management: the hazard-versus-outrage distinction, the components of outrage, the three paradigms of risk communication, the key strategies of outrage management, etc. But I did try to focus especially on what the nuclear power industry and its supporters get wrong – for example, imagining that their core communication mistake is failing to sell their strengths effectively, whereas I believe it is failing to acknowledge their problems candidly. There are recommendations for nuclear communication throughout the podcast, and a Q&A at the end with Rod and fellow proponents Margaret Harding, Meredith Angwin, and Suzy Hobbs-Baker. The plan is to follow up with a second podcast, a more narrowly focused roundtable discussion among the five of us on nuclear power outrage management.
Stakeholder Engagement Meets Outrage Management
Panel discussion (with Rob Stokes and Jill Hannaford), Sydney Australia, February 15, 2016
Rob Stokes is the very thoughtful Minister of Planning of New South Wales, Australia. This February 2016 video is a 58-minute wide-ranging dialogue between me and Rob (with audience Q&A), focusing on distinctions and overlaps between traditional stakeholder engagement and my outrage management concept. Among the issues discussed: why should organizations engage their stakeholders; telling legitimate from pro forma engagement; telling legitimate from disruptive participation; dealing with “fanatic” stakeholders and their “attentive” followers; engagement fatigue; consulting early on problems versus late on projects; NIMBY; engagement and outrage management via social media; engaging about locally disruptive development projects; and why Australia is especially receptive to the outrage management concept. Near the end (starting at 46:36; link provided on Vimeo) I was asked about something completely different: risk communication challenges of the Zika epidemic.
The event was sponsored by the GHD consultancy (which had brought me to
Sydney for several weeks of work with its clients); GHD’s Barbara Campany
introduced the panel and GHD’s Jill Hannaford facilitated the discussion.
Social Media’s Impact on Reputation Management
Interview with Peter M. Sandman by Maura O’Malley, January 31, 2011
Maura O'Malley of Intellectual Property Magazine asked if she could interview me for an article on “management of reputations online” – particularly on how the rise of social media had affected the way companies manage (or should manage) reputational crises. In the 40-minute telephone interview that resulted, I argued that it has always been a mistake for companies to ignore, patronize, or attack their critics instead of being responsive. The growth of social media has made this mistake much more obvious and much more damaging, I said; even the most recalcitrant companies are beginning to learn the lesson. We also talked about the role of lawyers (the magazine’s main audience) in reputational controversies, plus some other topics. Maura’s article, entitled “Reputation 3.0,” was published in the March 2011 issue of Intellectual Property Magazine, pp. 20–22.
Outrage Management: A Tough Paradigm for Public Relations to Swallow
Interview with Peter M. Sandman by Scott Van Camp, March 10, 2011
PR News editor Scott Van Camp interviewed me on risk communication, and especially my “outrage management” approach to stakeholder controversies. He had already told me he thought the topic would be new and a bit startling to his readers. So I focused a lot of the 50-minute interview on the difficulties PR people have accepting the core strategies of outrage management. If you’re used to figuring out how to get apathetic people interested in your client’s business, I pointed out, it’s a tough adjustment when suddenly you’re addressing an audience that’s all-too-interested – hostile or at least skeptical regarding your client’s business. I have also posted the March 14 issue of PR News containing Scott’s story, entitled “ Risk Communication Formula: Avoid Half-Truths, Manage the Outrage.” It’s a decent enough summary of my approach, but is noteworthy mainly for the skeptical interest shown by the PR people Scott interviewed about me.
Three Paradigms of Radiological Risk Communication: Alerting, Reassuring, Guiding
Presented to the National Public Health Information Coalition, Miami Beach FL, October 21, 2009
Although this six-hour seminar was entitled “Three Paradigms of Radiological Risk Communication,” NPHIC asked me to go easy on the “radiological” part and give participants a broad introduction to my approach to risk communication, mentioning radiation issues from time to time. So that’s what I did.
Fair warning: These are not professional videos. NPHIC member Joe Rebele put a camera in the back of the room and let it run. You won’t lose much listening to the MP3 audio files on this site instead.
- Part Two (155 min.)
Part Two includes a little over an hour on outrage management strategies. I think the Rio Tinto outrage management clips are much better – but if you want something short and don’t mind the poor production values, the last hour or so of Part Two might meet your needs. It’s preceded by about 20 minutes on the seesaw and other risk communication games and a little over an hour on precaution advocacy strategies.
- Part One (90 min.)
If you’re interested, Part One is an introduction to the hazard-versus-outrage distinction and the three paradigms of risk communication.
- Part Three (72 min.)
Part Three is devoted to strategies of crisis communication.
Climate Change Risk Communication: Outrage Management, Not Just Precaution Advocacy
Taped for Freakonomics Radio, July 25, 2011
This was a 48-minute telephone interview with Stephen Dubner, for a forthcoming Freakonomics Radio program (and podcast) on climate change. The interview never made it into the program/podcast, but excerpts were added to the Freakonomics website on November 29, 2011. The first 17 minutes of the interview are generic – Risk Communication 101, basically. The rest is grounded mostly in my 2009 column on “Climate Change Risk Communication: The Problem of Psychological Denial,” though Dubner periodically pushed me to speculate on new aspects of the topic. My main argument: Climate change risk communicators are good at informing and scaring apathetic people, but need an entirely different strategy – something more like outrage management – for people who are in denial about climate change.
Public Communications Regarding the Detection of Lead in Washington, D.C. Water
by Jody Lanard, M.D.
Testimony before the Subcommittee on Fisheries, Wildlife, and Water, U.S. Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works, Oversight Hearing on the Detection of Lead in D.C. Drinking Water, April 7, 2004
When a U.S. Senate committee decided to look at a lead-in-drinking-water controversy in Washington, D.C., it invited my wife and colleague Jody Lanard to speak. Her written testimony reviews some of our principles of crisis communication and outrage management, and applies them to the way Washington’s water utility was handling the finding of too much lead. The link below is to the video record of the hearing itself on the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee website. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s comments about Jody’s testimony (and about risk communication) start just after 2:02:00. Jody’s oral testimony starts at 2:35:24. Her Q&A starts at 2:50:20, and includes several of her favorite teaching examples.
BP’s Communication Response to the Deepwater Horizon Spill
BBC Radio 4 interview with Peter M. Sandman, broadcast on the “PM” newscast, May 3, 2010
On May 3 I did a brief interview with BBC Radio on risk communication aspects of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Although the interview was prerecorded, to my surprise they used the whole thing. In addition to the MP3 file with the interview, I have posted a summary of what I said and what else I’d have liked to say. My later reflections on the spill were more critical of BP. See for example my September 2010 column, “Risk Communication Lessons from the BP Spill.”
Communicating about Mass Casualty Events
Interview with Peter M. Sandman, via Zoom audio, by Olivia Truban, December 1, 2022
In October 2022 I got an email from Olivia Truban, a University of Maryland Ph.D. student, asking to interview me for her research on how to “ethically communicate about mass casualty events,” especially mass shootings. I started our December 1, 56-minute conversation with the basics of the hazard-versus-outrage distinction, making my case that mass casualty events obviously call for crisis communication vis-à-vis those at risk, but also require precaution advocacy (for those who might face the risk someday) and outrage management (for those who are excessively upset now). We went on to focus mostly on the outrage management challenge when bystanders are excessively frightened or miserable. We talked about how natural and morally neutral risks arouse less outrage than when evil people do evil things; then about two ways to respond to excessive outrage (validate people’s outrage and offer them things to do). At the end of the interview Olivia asked me about the ethics of consulting with dishonest clients, then about why authorities should show their feelings rather than staying “professional.”
Risk and Crisis Communications
Interview with Peter M. Sandman, via Zoom audio, by Eric Holdeman, December 9, 2022
I’ve known emergency management expert Eric Holdeman for decades, ever since I did some risk communication training for him when he was emergency management director for King County (Seattle). On December 9, 2022, he interviewed me via Zoom for his “Disaster Zone” podcast; he posted the interview on December 20. Our 52-minute conversation was all over the map. I explained the hazard-versus-outrage distinction, but never got very far into the high-hazard, high-outrage corner of that 2x2 matrix (crisis communication, Eric’s corner). We did spend some time talking about the Three Mile Island accident, arguably high-hazard and certainly high-outrage. But we focused more on the principles and strategies of outrage management (low-hazard, high outrage) – so that’s where I’m indexing the interview. We also talked about how I got into risk communication in the first place, what went wrong in U.S. COVID risk communication, what I think about Tony Fauci … basically whatever came to mind.
Crisis Communication
Crisis Communication: Guidelines for Action
by Peter M. Sandman and Jody Lanard
Produced by the American Industrial Hygiene Association, Fairfax VA, 2004
This 166-minute video, produced by the American Industrial Hygiene Association in 2004, covers 25 crisis communication recommendations, focusing chiefly on the most difficult messaging challenges that even experienced crisis communicators may get wrong. AIHA stopped distributing the video in January 2012, so now it᾿s available for free on Vimeo (video) and on this site (audio). Unlike many of my videos, this one was professionally produced in a studio, with multiple cameras and an actual set – and it features not just me but also my wife and colleague Jody Lanard. Although some of the examples may be dated – there᾿s a lot of SARS and bird flu throughout the video – the recommendations themselves haven᾿t changed. A complete set of handouts to accompany this video is available.
- Part One (51:59)
-
Part One introduces where Jody and I think crisis communication fits in risk communication (high hazard, high outrage), and then discusses the first six of our 25 crisis communication recommendations:
- Don᾿t over-reassure.
- Put reassuring information in subordinate clauses.
- Err on the alarming side.
- Acknowledge uncertainty.
- Share dilemmas.
- Acknowledge opinion diversity.
- Part Two (57:11)
-
Part Two covers numbers 7 through 16 of the 25 crisis communication recommendations discussed in the video:
- Be willing to speculate.
- Don᾿t overdiagnose or overplan for panic.
- Don᾿t aim for zero fear.
- Don᾿t forget emotions other than fear.
- Don᾿t ridicule the public᾿s emotions.
- Legitimize people᾿s fears.
- Tolerate early over-reactions.
- Establish your own humanity.
- Tell people what to expect.
- Offer people things to do.
Link off-site to page with this video
Link launches an on-site audio file (94MB)
- Part Three (57:10)
-
Part Three covers numbers 17 through 25 of the 25 crisis communication recommendations:
- Let people choose their own actions.
- Ask more of people.
- Acknowledge errors, deficiencies, and misbehaviors.
- Apologize often for errors, deficiencies, and misbehaviors.
- Be explicit about “anchoring frames.”
- Be explicit about changes in official opinion, prediction, or policy.
- Don᾿t lie, and don᾿t tell half-truths.
- Aim for total candor and transparency.
- Be careful with risk comparisons.
Crisis Communication for Emergency Managers
Part Two of a two-part interview with Peter M. Sandman by George Whitney of Complete EM, July 22, 2016.
George Whitney runs an emergency management consulting company called Complete EM. His website features a blog and a podcast series. On July 22, 2016 he interviewed me by phone for nearly two hours. He edited the interview into two podcasts, which he entitled “Dr. Peter Sandman – Risk Communication” and “Dr. Peter Sandman – Crisis Communication.” I have given them new titles.
This interview segment, George’s Part Two, ranges broadly. After distinguishing crisis communication from pre-crisis communication, I focused first on some crisis communication basics: don’t over-reassure, don’t be over-confident, don’t think people are panicking when they’re not. Then in response to George’s questions I addressed an assortment of additional topics: civil unrest; crisis planning; the L’Aquila earthquake communication controversy; crisis mnemonics like “Run – Hide – Fight”; how emergency management professionals can use social media; and the pros and cons of going public in a crisis before you have come up to speed. (Part One is “Scaring People: The Uses and Limitations of Fear Appeals.”)
Emergency Risk Communication CDCynergy video clips
Produced by the U.S. CDC and others as part of a 2003 CD-ROM
The “Emergency Risk Communication CDCynergy” CD-ROM from which these video clips were taken was originally produced in 2003 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Office of Communication), the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, the Prospect Center of the American Institutes for Research, and the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education. The complete CD-ROM can be ordered. Much of the CD-ROM is also available without charge online, but many of the online links no longer work.
I was one of a number of risk communication experts who contributed to the CD-ROM. Three of my written contributions have long been posted on this website:
The following short video clips on various aspects of crisis communication were part of the CD-ROM but no longer load in the online version. So I have posted them here, converted to Flash videos and .mpeg4.
- “Move in the Uncomfortable Direction” (2 min.)
Crisis communication strategies have a side that practitioners find comfortable and a side they find uncomfortable – withholding information versus total candor, for example. Best practice is somewhere in the middle. To get there, practitioners need to move in the uncomfortable direction.
- “Give People Things to Do” (4 min.)
Giving people things to do – and better yet, choices among things to do – helps them cope with the fear and other feelings that crises arouse.
- “Manage the Risk Communication Seesaw” (3 min.)
Seesaws prevail in crisis communication as they do in most of risk communication, and practitioners need to climb onto the side they don’t want the public on. To get blamed less by others, for example, it helps to blame yourself more.
- “Be Willing to Speculate” (2 min.)
Crisis communication absolutely requires speculation; you can’t confine what you say to things that are certain. The trick is to avoid speculating overconfidently or over-reassuringly.
- “Here’s How to Speculate” (2 min.)
Tell what you know and what you don’t. Sound as sure and as unsure as you actually are. Focus on both likeliest scenarios and worst case scenarios – and keep the distinction clear.
- “Let Your Feelings Show” (1 min.)
To be an effective role model for others, you have to show that you’re feeling what they’re feeling (fear, anger, etc.). Watching you control your feelings helps people control theirs.
Flash video on this site (2.2MB)
MP4 video on this site (2.6MB)
Link launches an on-site audio file (463kB)
- “Tell Stories” (1 min.)
Telling stories about yourself helps humanize you, which helps people bear the crisis better.
- “Choose the Best Spokesperson” (3 min.)
You want someone who has communication skill, risk communication training, and technical expertise. You also want someone who likes the job, is willing to simplify, and has enough stature in your organization to make decisions and keep promises.
- “Find a Crisis Communicator” (1 min.)
You want someone who knows how to guide people who are rightly upset. That isn’t necessarily the same communicator who’s good at arousing concern in people who are unwisely apathetic.
Three Paradigms of Radiological Risk Communication: Alerting, Reassuring, Guiding
Presented to the National Public Health Information Coalition, Miami Beach FL, October 21, 2009
Although this six-hour seminar was entitled “Three Paradigms of Radiological Risk Communication,” NPHIC asked me to go easy on the “radiological” part and give participants a broad introduction to my approach to risk communication, mentioning radiation issues from time to time. So that’s what I did.
Fair warning: These are not professional videos. NPHIC member Joe Rebele put a camera in the back of the room and let it run. You won’t lose much listening to the MP3 audio files on this site instead.
- Part Three (72 min.)
Despite its poor production values, Part Three is the most complete rundown on crisis communication strategies I have so far posted in video or audio.
- Part One (90 min.)
If you’re interested, Part One is a decent introduction to the hazard-versus-outrage distinction and the three paradigms of risk communication.
- Part Two (155 min.)
Part Two starts with 20 minutes of so on the seesaw and other risk communication games (thus completing the introductory segment). The rest of Part Two spends a little over an hour each on some key strategies of precaution advocacy and outrage management.
How to Lead during Times of Trouble
A roundtable discussion at “The Public as an Asset, Not a Problem: A Summit on Leadership during Bioterrorism,” Johns Hopkins University Center for Civilian Biodefense Strategies, Washington DC, February, 2003
In early February of 2003, I attended a wonderful conference on bioterrorism, focused on “the public as an asset, not a problem.” The panel I participated in was about how to lead a community during times of trouble. Most of the panelists had actually led their communities through various crises, from the 2001 anthrax attacks to Oklahoma City’s bombing; I was added, along with the Washington Post’s Sally Quinn, so there would be at least two panelists whose experience was observing rather than doing. I made basically two points: that the public can take it when officials or experts disagree, and that fear is appropriate in crisis situations and officials shouldn’t try to “allay” it.
BP’s Communication Response to the Deepwater Horizon Spill
BBC Radio 4 interview with Peter M. Sandman, broadcast on the “PM” newscast, May 3, 2010
On May 3 I did a brief interview with BBC Radio on risk communication aspects of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Although the interview was prerecorded, to my surprise they used the whole thing. In addition to the MP3 file with the interview, I have posted a summary of what I said and what else I’d have liked to say. My later reflections on the spill were more critical of BP. See for example my September 2010 column, “Risk Communication Lessons from the BP Spill.”
Infectious Diseases
8 Things U.S. Pandemic Communicators Still Get Wrong
Presentation via Zoom to the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists, January 11, 2022
This 80-minute presentation addresses eight COVID risk communication mistakes that I believe are undermining public trust in public health: overconfidence and failure to proclaim uncertainty; failure to do anticipatory guidance; fake consensus; prioritizing health over all other goods; prioritizing health over truth; failure to own your mistakes; failure to address misinformation credibly and empathetically; and politicization.
To listen to specific segments:
- Overconfidence and failure to proclaim uncertainty (11:22)
- Failure to do anticipatory guidance (18:29)
- Fake consensus (25:26)
- Prioritizing health over all other goods (33:13)
- Prioritizing health over truth (42:55)
- Failure to own your mistakes (53:40)
- Failure to address misinformation credibly and empathetically (59:13)
- Politicization (1:14:28)
The presentation got its start as a November 15, 2021 Teams presentation to the Minnesota Department of Health. That was revised into a December 10, 2021 commentary for the University of Minnesota Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP), available both on the CIDRAP website and on this website. I revised it some more for the CSTE presentation. An additional hour of discussion was not taped.
U.S. Public Health Professionals Routinely Mislead the Public about Infectious Diseases: True or False? Dishonest or Self-Deceptive? Harmful or Benign?
Presented to the Leadership Forum, University of Minnesota Center for Infectious Disease Research & Policy, Minneapolis MN, October 5, 2016
This is the uncut video – 101 minutes long – of an October 5, 2016 presentation I gave to the CIDRAP Leadership Forum. It continues and updates an argument I have been making for years: that the public health profession is far too willing to say or imply untrue things in its communications with the public.
In my introductory comments I discuss the dishonesty of public health professionals generically: why they do it; why they get away with it (compared to corporate leaders who are far likelier to be caught and crucified); how they feel about it; whether it undermines their credibility; whether they’re intentionally dishonest or self-deceptive or deceived by their leaders; the relationship between dishonesty and disrespect; etc.
Then comes the meat of the presentation. I intended to focus on four detailed examples:
But I ran out of time toward the end and had to settle for a very short summary of my views about Zika funding.
Throughout the presentation, my position wasn't that public health professionals are wrong about these four controversies, but rather that they are too often dishonest and disrespectful in the way they make their case.
The text of my speech notes contains a lot of detail that I skipped in the actual presentation – both additional points and additional proof (with links) for the points I actually made in Minneapolis. It also has a Foreword written later. And it covers Zika funding; by the time I got to Zika funding in Minneapolis, I was nearly out of time.
What Goes Into an Expert’s Expert Judgment Other Than That Expert’s Expertise (with COVID examples)
Panel presentation (via Zoom) at a conference on “COVID and the Academy: What Have We Learned?” Heterodox Academy Research Symposium, Stanford, California, February 23, 2024
The Heterodox Academy (HxA) has the important mission of fostering respectful debate that includes people with unpopular opinions, especially in academia. So I was delighted and flattered when an HxA official invited me to speak at a February 23, 2024 day-long conference on “COVID and the Academy: What Have We Learned?” I couldn’t make it to the conference venue at Stanford University, but we agreed that I would speak via Zoom, one of three participants in a panel of social scientists. My title was “What Goes Into an Expert ’s Expert Judgment Other Than That Expert’s Expertise.” I covered eight points, all points I have written about before (especially here), but not all in the same place and not illustrated with COVID examples. Since I was assigned only 20 minutes (and graciously granted 31), the speech was sketchy, especially toward the end – so I am also posting my much-less-sketchy notes for the hour-long speech I wished I could give.
My Top Gripes (some longstanding, some current and fleeting) about How Public Health Professionals Are Communicating COVID-19 Risk
Interview with Peter M. Sandman by Faye Flam, March 3, 2021
Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, Faye Flam of Bloomberg News has periodically checked in with me by email or phone. I posted the audio of our hour-long February 9 (2020) interview, which was mostly about the need to sound the alarm more aggressively; and our 1-1/2–hour July 23 (2020) interview, which was largely about lockdown versus “learning to dance with the virus.”
This time we talked for nearly two hours and covered a lot of ground, under the general heading of “my top gripes about how public health professionals are communicating COVID-19 risk.” The uniting theme insofar as there was one: the many ways experts and officials cherry-pick what to say based less on the truth as they understand it than on other factors: sometimes what they think will most effectively convince the public to do what they think best; sometimes their anger at what other experts and officials are saying; sometimes their values and political opinions; etc.
For those who don't want to listen to the whole 115 minutes, I have divided the audio tape into 11 segments. The titles are linked below.
Faye has a podcast series entitled “Follow the Science.” On March 12 she posted #13 in the series, “When Public Health Officials Lie,” based entirely on the second and third segments of our March 3 interview. I think she covered this material spectacularly well. On March 19 she posted #14, “When Trust in Experts Goes Too Far.” The second half of this podcast is an effort to tie together bits and pieces from the rest of the interview.
- 1. Claiming all COVID-19 vaccines are equally good
Convincing people to accept whatever vaccine they’re offered is a worthwhile goal, but claiming there are no differences among the vaccines is the wrong way to do it. (Note: I claim in this segment that all the vaccines are virtually 100% effective at preventing deaths and hospitalizations. This is what many experts are claiming, and I drank the Kool-Aid. It may be true, but the Phase 3 trials don’t prove it.)
2. Selling health versus telling the truth
Public health professionals face a dilemma when they believe (sometimes correctly) that telling the whole truth is likely to undermine the health behaviors they want people to practice. But getting caught misleading the public could undermine public health more broadly. Examples include the oral polio and measles vaccines, as well as COVID-19 precautions like masks and social distancing.
3. The bias in favor of pessimistic messaging-
A good example of prioritizing health over truth is the way public health professionals have tended to be overly pessimistic about COVID-19, hoping their pessimistic messaging will motivate people to keep taking precautions. Examples include whether vaccinated people are likely to transmit the disease, how dangerous the new variants are, and the riskiness of outdoor socializing.
4. Science versus values
Scientists tend to conflate their scientific knowledge with their trans-scientific opinions (their values, even their partisan political values). How risky it is to reopen schools is a scientific question. Whether it’s too risky and we shouldn’t do it is a trans-scientific question about which scientists have no special expertise. And how scientists feel about anti-lockdown demonstrations versus anti-racism demonstrations shouldn’t affect how risky scientists say they are.
5. Harm reduction versus aiming for zero risk
Whereas moral judgments tend to be dichotomous, safety judgments are matters of degree. A focus on COVID-19 safety (not morality) suggests a harm reduction approach, rather than pursuing the unattainable and futility-arousing goal of zero risk. People need a Plan B for when the safest option feels like more than they can handle as they balance COVID-19 risk against other priorities in their lives.
6. What we get instead of respectful, tentative debate
When answers are uncertain, science progresses best with respectful, tentative debate. Instead, four patterns have dominated COVID-19 communication: (1) overconfident consensus (e.g. lockdowns); (2) discrepant opinions ignoring each other’s existence (e.g. NSAIDs after vaccination); (3) nasty debate (e.g. droplet transmission versus aerosol transmission); and (4) censorship of minority opinions – the most dangerous pattern of all (e.g. the Great Barrington Declaration).
7. Could we have crushed the virus?
A pandemic like this one is inevitably going to be horrible, and there’s no “right” way to manage it so it’s not horrible – except possibly for isolated islands. Still, authoritarian and communitarian cultures have a better shot at pandemic management than individualistic cultures like the U.S. It’s worth pondering whether a more individualistic messaging strategy might have worked better and might still work better here.
8. Selling COVID-19 vaccination to Trump supporters
I think vaccine-hesitant people won’t be an important audience until supply exceeds demand. When that time comes, the biggest vaccine-hesitant cohort will be Trump-supporting Republicans, not people of color. Yet there seems to be little interest so far in reaching out to this group: for example, by giving Trump credit for Operation Warp Speed; by trying to secure a Trump pro-vaccine PSA; by developing conservative, individualistic messaging; etc.
9. Resuscitating CDC’s reputation
Surprisingly, the Biden administration did not reinstate the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as a key COVID-19 news source. One possible reason is that CDC’s reputation was already damaged in the minds of attentive publics – damaged less by Trump than by its own misdeeds. To resuscitate its reputation, I think it has to own up to these misdeeds. Among them: (1) failing to develop or buy a usable COVID-19 test at the outset of the pandemic; (2) changing its tune about masks and lying about why; and (3) failing to become the central source of reliable COVID-19 statistics.
10. Health versus equity in vaccine prioritization
A fourth CDC misdeed, arguably, was the initial vaccine prioritization recommendations of its Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which subordinated public health goals like saving lives and reducing hospital overcrowding to the goal of racial equity. It is totally appropriate for racial equity (or any value) to trump public health considerations in the final decisions of political leaders – but not, I think, in the public health recommendations of public health professionals.
11. Standard Operating Procedure in an emergency
The Food and Drug Administration is deeply committed to Standard Operating Procedure. It refuses to “cut corners” even in an emergency like the COVID-19 pandemic. Examples include slow-walking the early vaccine rollouts, refusing to approve the AstraZeneca vaccine because of Phase 3 trial defects, and forbidding the first-doses-first approach to get more people vaccinated quicker. (This segment ends with a brief discussion of when to start sending vaccine overseas. I thought it was too short to stand alone but too interesting to leave out.)
Risk=Hazard+Outrage: Some Risk Communication Basics (and some COVID comments) – 2024 Edition
Class presented via Zoom to Prof. Michael Osterholm’s course on “Emerging Infectious Diseases: Current Issues, Policies and Controversies,” University of Minnesota School of Public Health, February 5, 2024
Prof. Mike Osterholm of the University of Minnesota Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy periodically asks me to give a Zoom class on risk communication for his School of Public Health graduate course on “Emerging Infectious Diseases.” I previously posted the March 21, 2022 “edition.” You can access the video, audio, and slide set there.
This is the February 5, 2024 edition. The main difference is this time I got permission to include an audio of the 83-minute Q&A that followed my presentation. This Q&A pretty much ignored my hazard-versus-outrage basics and focused on what went wrong in COVID risk communication. The class reading assignment had included two of my pre-COVID articles on public health dishonesty (here and here), so there was discussion of that topic too. I recorded the Q&A on my phone, so my answers are clear but the students’ questions are barely audible.
Another difference: This time I'm also posting Zoom’s machine transcript of the presentation, for those who’d rather read than watch or listen.
The content of the Q&A is new, of course, but the presentation itself is mostly my trademark explanation of the distinction between hazard and outrage and the resulting paradigms of risk communication: precaution advocacy, outrage management, crisis communication, and public participation. Along the way and at the very end I commented on COVID implications of the various paradigms … a little of which did change between 2022 and 2024.
Risk = Hazard + Outrage: Some Risk Communication Basics (and some COVID comments)
Class presented via Zoom to Prof. Michael Osterholm’s course on “Emerging Infectious Diseases: Current Issues, Policies and Controversies,” University of Minnesota School of Public Health, March 21, 2022.
Michael Osterholm of the University of Minnesota Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy periodically asks me to give a Zoom class on risk communication for his School of Public Health course on emerging infectious diseases. The most recent one on March 21, 2022 was recorded (except for the wonderful Q&A) – so here it is.
It’s mostly my trademark presentation on the distinction between hazard and outrage and the resulting paradigms of risk communication: precaution advocacy, outrage management, crisis communication, and public participation (stakeholder consultation). Along the way and at the very end I commented briefly on COVID risk communication.
The U.S. Can Control Covid Without a Second Lockdown
by Faye Flam
Posted on the Bloomberg Opinion website, July 30, 2020
Lockdown Again versus Learning to Dance with the Virus
Interview with Peter M. Sandman by Faye Flam, July 23, 2020
Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, Faye Flam of Bloomberg News has periodically checked in with me by email or phone. I posted the audio of our hour-long February 9 interview, which was mostly about the need to sound the alarm more aggressively. Our July 23 interview, which ran almost 90 minutes, is a good follow-up. We focused on how I think the U.S. public health profession has mishandled and miscommunicated COVID-19 in the intervening months. First it underreacted and left us unprepared. Then it overreacted and sent us into lockdown. Then it justified the lockdown by promulgating a suppression narrative (prevent infections at all costs) instead of teaching us to balance priorities, flatten the curve, and “dance” with the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Faye’s July 30 article is mostly in her voice, with few quotes from me or anyone else. But it captures much of what we talked about. I have divided the MP3 audio file into five segments, described below.
Link goes to Faye Flam’s offsite article
Link launches the complete on-site audio file (123MB, 1 hr. 28 min.)
- 1. Five ways public health misled us.
In this first segment I outlined my five-point claim that public health professionals: (a) underreacted to the pandemic and left us unprepared; (b) then overreacted and locked us down; (c) then justified lockdown by saying we must minimize transmission rather than balancing infection control against other priorities; (d) meanwhile abandoned the “flatten the curve“ explanation; and (e) kept insisting we pay attention only to “The Science“ – that is, to them.
- 2. Suppression versus balance.
We talked at length about the difference between a suppression narrative (prevent infections at all costs) and a narrative that encourages policy-makers to balance infection control against other priorities. As an example of balance I introduced Tomás Pueyo’s metaphor of “The Hammer and the Dance.“
- 3. Tradeoffs.
Here the conversation shifted to individual pandemic decision-making: deciding how much risk you’re willing to take, then deciding which precautions you prefer to get your risk level down where you want it. For individuals to make these kinds of tradeoff decisions, they need guidance on how much risk various behaviors entail. Even more they need to be taught the balance narrative instead of the suppression narrative.
- 4. Learning to dance
Faye asked me what I thought would happen next. The U.S. is behind most of Europe and Asia in learning to dance with the virus, I said, but I am hopeful that we, too, will ultimately learn. Paradoxically, July’s post-lockdown infection spikes in several southern states may have freed some public health professionals to acknowledge that permanent lockdown isn’t viable and we have no choice but to learn to dance.
- 5. How public health went wrong.
At the end of the interview, we looked back at January, February, and March, as I tried to analyze how public health went wrong. Public health professionals over-reassured us in the crucial early weeks, I said, because they didn’t want to be called alarmists. Then after New York City exploded they panicked, and endorsed a lockdown even in places where the virus wasn’t spreading explosively and less extreme measures probably could have done the job.
A COVID ‘second wave’ that never crashed. Should public health mislead if it saves lives in a pandemic?
by Jad Sleiman
Posted on the WHYY (Philadelphia) website, April 30, 2021 (and broadcast on various NPR stations at various times in the days that followed)
On March 8, 2021, Jad Sleiman of WHYY radio in Philadelphia interviewed me by telephone about the ways in which public health professionals “gild the lily” (my phrase, not his), saying things that aren’t strictly true when they believe doing so will help make public health messaging more persuasive and thereby save lives. We talked for an hour and 44 minutes, covering both COVID-19 examples and others from earlier in my career. On March 23 I posted the audio of the complete interview, divided into segments to make for easier listening, as well as an email I had sent to Jad before the interview. Descriptions and links for the original interview and pre-interview email are here.
On April 30, nearly two months after that March 8 interview, Jad finally used it. He posted two versions of his story: a 26-minute podcast and radio program (part of a WHYY series called “The Pulse” for National Public Radio) and a print article on the WHYY website. The two are very similar – and in my judgment, very well done. (Jad’s other source for the piece is Holley Wilkin, a health communications professor at Georgia State University.) Because I like what he produced so much, I didn’t want to bury it – so I decided to write this separate entry in my various indexes, rather than just attaching the new links to my March 23 entry.
Link launches the on-site audio file of Jad Sleiman’s podcast (12MB, 26:20 min.)
Link to the off-site article
Link to my March 23 website entry with descriptions and links for the original March 8 interview (divided into segments) and pre-interview email
Peter Sandman: How Your Ability To Process Risk Can Save Your Life
Interview with Chris Martenson of Peak Prosperity, podcast posted July 7, 2020
Chris Martenson’s “Peak Prosperity” YouTube channel currently claims 368,000 subscribers. Chris is best known for his “Crash Course” on how pretty much everything is in rapid decline. In 2020, not surprisingly, he has posted dozens of videos on COVID-19. One of these, posted in March, was devoted entirely to my 2005 article on the adjustment reaction concept. Entitled “Coronavirus: How To Inform Your Friends & Family Without Creating Pushback,” it got 330,000 views and 4,428 comments in three months – way out of my league.
So when Chris said he wanted to interview me via Zoom for an hour-long podcast, I said yes. We did it on June 29. Chris wanted to talk (again!) about adjustment reactions. I wanted to talk (again) about the basics of risk communication. We both wanted to talk about the ways the U.S. is mismanaging the COVID-19 pandemic. So we did all three. Our COVID-19 discussion focused mostly on a risk communication analysis, but we inevitably veered into risk management and epidemiology as well.
Vaccination Safety Skepticism: Public Health’s Self-Inflicted Wound
(Three-part video interview conducted October 27, 2010)
When I was asked to do an interview for a documentary on vaccines and vaccine safety, I agreed on condition that I be allowed to post the entire interview online. I focused my comments on public skepticism about vaccine safety – and especially on what vaccination proponents do that exacerbates the skepticism and what they can do to ameliorate it. The interviewer’s questions have been edited out, but the rest is here, uncut, in three parts.
Part One
Part One discusses: the kinds of vaccination audiences – apathetic versus hostile; suppressing the other side’s 5% of the truth; being empathic and being accountable; and other risk communication aspects of vaccination safety skepticism.
Part Two
Part Two discusses: vaccination/autism controversies; who’s in charge of vaccine safety research; what’s left out of flu vaccination messaging; and other risk communication aspects of vaccination safety skepticism.
Part Three
Part Three discusses: lying about polio; different messaging for different audiences; why “good guys” mislead more; and other risk communication aspects of vaccination safety skepticism.
Trust the Public with More of the Truth: What I Learned in 40 Years in Risk Communication
Presented to the National Public Health Information Coalition, Miami Beach FL, October 20, 2009
The National Public Health Information Coalition is an organization of federal, state, and local health department communicators. NPHIC asked me to give its 2009 “Berreth Lecture” at its annual conference in Miami Beach – and specified that the presentation should be about myself and my career, not the substance of risk communication. But as I walked the group through my 40 years in risk communication, a substantive theme emerged: that public health communicators are at least as untrustworthy as corporate communicators, that nobody has the courage to trust the public with those parts of the truth that conflict with the message, and that public health agencies need to learn how to cope better with mistrust and outrage. I illustrated my thesis with a lot of flu and other infectious diseases examples.
Note: I had written the speech out in advance – something I almost never do – but I departed from my text more than a little. So even those who prefer watching or listening to reading might want to look at it.
Coronavirus Complacency Arrives Ahead of Schedule
by Faye Flam
Posted on the Bloomberg Opinion website, February 11, 2020
A Wide-Ranging Interview on the Coronavirus Pandemic-To-Be
Interview with Peter M. Sandman by Faye Flam, February 9, 2020
Faye Flam of Bloomberg News has interviewed me on several risk communication issues over the years, so I wasn’t surprised when she said she wanted to talk to me about coronavirus risk communication. Our February 9 telephone conversation ran 57 mins. Faye’s February 11 article made very little use of the interview. She may or may not use it for additional articles to come; if she does, I’ll post the links. In the meantime, I have divided the MP3 into six segments, described below.
Link goes to Faye Flam’s offsite article
Link launches the complete on-site audio file (80.1MB, 57 min.)
- 1. Why worry now.
Some basics of what pandemics are like and what this pandemic-to-be will probably be like. More context than risk communication, except for why it’s bad risk communication to tell people not to worry now because the risk isn’t here yet.
- 2. Why tell now.
How transparent Singapore is being about its coronavirus cases. Why the U.S. should use Singapore as a role model, helping its public prepare emotionally and logistically.
- 3. Containment.
How China is trying to contain the coronavirus. How the U.S. is also trying to contain the coronavirus. Why containment is useful to slow disease spread and buy time, even if it can’t stop the spread – and why the public needs to understand that before containment fails.
- 4. Scaring people.
How U.S. messaging fails to give people a sense that we may be facing a hard time for a while. Why WHO’s “facts not fear” mantra is off-target when the facts are fearful and fear is useful. Bird flu and swine flu as “bookends” vis-à-vis what’s probably coming.
- 5. Preparedness.
How individuals can prepare, emotionally and logistically. How organizations can prepare. The weirdness of urging preparedness for risks that aren’t even on the horizon and then not urging preparedness when they are on the horizon.
- 6. Conspiracy theories.
Bioengineered coronavirus “conspiracy theories.” Why outlier opinions are healthy even though they’re almost always wrong. Why treating them respectfully makes more sense than trashing them.
Public Health Messaging that Aims to Persuade the Audience at the Expense of Truth: Some Examples from COVID-19 and Earlier
Interview with Peter M. Sandman by Jad Sleiman, March 8, 2021
(and a March 2 email from Peter M. Sandman to Jad Sleiman)
On March 2, journalist Jad Sleiman sent me a very thoughtful email about “a question I’ve been wrestling with all pandemic: Should public health messaging be objective (telling the public the most precise version of reality according to their best data) or should public health messaging be persuasive (telling the public what is most likely to persuade them to adopt a given life-saving behavior)?” It’s a question I’ve been wrestling with for decades. My emailed response that same day went into some detail on my thinking, with several pre-COVID examples of the conflict between truth-telling and health-selling. It resulted in a 1-hour and 44-minute March 8 interview, covering both COVID and pre-COVID examples. A reporter for WHYY radio in Philadelphia, Jad used the interview for both an April 30 episode of “The Pulse” (a WHYY podcast series and National Public Radio program) and an April 30 article on the WHYY website. Jad’s podcast/radio show and article are described and linked here. Below are links to my email to Jad and the interview itself.
- 1. Some risk communication basics and history
A little of my background. The three risk communication paradigms. How risk communication has evolved as a field of study.
2. Gilding the lily – principles
Why “good guys” are often more dishonest than “bad guys.” The temptation to mislead or exaggerate in the service of health. Being trusted, being trustworthy, and trusting the public.
3. Two pandemics – swine flu versus COVID-19-
In hindsight, public health professionals overreacted to the mild swine flu pandemic. So when COVID-19 came along they were primed to make the opposite mistake.
4. Gilding the lily – pre-COVID examples
Smoking cessation. Measles vaccination. Dengvaxia vaccination. Sometimes public health dishonesty is unnecessary; sometimes it saves lives; sometimes it backfires.
5. Gilding the lily – selling COVID-19 precautions
The evidence about the effectiveness of COVID-19 precautions is weaker than public health professionals want to let on.
6. The communicative accuracy principle and the facemask example
Credibility craters when people learn things later you led them to believe weren’t so. Early mask messaging is a good bad example. Acknowledging uncertainty can help.
7. Gilding the lily – COVID-19 vaccination
Uncertain evidence is interpreted one way re how well COVID-19 vaccines prevent death, the other way re how well they prevent transmission – both to get the public to do what we’re told.
8. Gilding the lily – three more examples
Handwashing (fomites versus droplets versus aerosols). Calling a blip the start of the next spike. And a non-COVID, non-crisis example: seasonal flu vaccination.
9. The public’s trust in science; scientists’ trust in the public
Is COVID-19 leading to more or less public trust in science? Do trusted sources abuse the trust and earn distrust? Are scientists learning to trust the public with more of the truth?
Vaccine Risk Communication: Dishonesty Makes Things Worse
Presented at a conference on “Research Integrity Challenges in Vaccine Development and Distribution for Public Health Emergencies,” sponsored by the Drexel University School of Public Health and the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia PA, September 12, 2011
Posted October, 7, 2011
My 40-minute speech is basically a distillation of points I made at greater length in my three-part interview on “Vaccine Safety Skepticism: Public Health’s Self-Inflicted Wound.” But there are a few new points.
The presentation was part of a panel on “Research Integrity Issues with Vaccines and Public Trust,” chaired by Michael Yudell of Drexel University. The other panelists were Virginia Caine and Steve Ostroff. Our joint Q&A is only partly about vaccine risk communication, of course.
Fireside chats, hard-hitting ads, owning mistakes: 5 experts lay out how America should wage an effective COVID-19 fight
Note: This article is behind a paywall.
by Kimberly Leonard
Posted on the Business Insider website, December 28, 2020
COVID-19 Vaccination Messaging
Note: Link launches an MP3 audio file (50.4MB, 1 hr. 13 min.)
Interview with Peter M. Sandman by Kimberly Leonard, December 22, 2020
Business Insider reporter Kimberly Leonard emailed me on December 17 to ask for an interview. She was planning an article on how the Biden team might do better with COVID-19 in 2021 than his predecessor did in 2020, and wanted me to address communication aspects of the story. I agreed. I offered a lot of suggestions in our 1-hour, 13-minute December 22 interview, from resurrecting CDC media briefings to recruiting sources who were locally trusted and sources (e.g. Donald Trump) who were trusted by otherwise recalcitrant prospective vaccinees. I also cautioned against overselling, and especially against treating people who just wanted to watch and wait for a while as if they were die-hard antivaxxers. Kimberly included a fair number of my points in her article.
Three Paradigms of Risk Communication – and a critique of COVID-19 Crisis Communication
Webinar presented via Zoom, then posted on YouTube, hosted by the Institute for Risk and Uncertainty, University of Liverpool, July 7, 2021
In April 2021, the University of Liverpool Institute for Risk and Uncertainty asked me to give a presentation in its monthly webinar series. We agreed I would divide my time between my “signature risk communication formula” and my criticisms of the way COVID-19 has been communicated. And on July 7 that’s what I did. The first third of this 94-minute webinar is introductory, my “Risk = Hazard + Outrage” formula and the three risk communication paradigms I derive from the formula. The second third is my critique of COVID-19 crisis communication, mostly in the U.S. The final third is Q&A and discussion, much of it focusing on COVID-19 risk communication dilemmas in the U.K.
My hosts promptly posted the webinar on YouTube, as they always do. That link is below. Also below is an audio-only recording of the webinar and my slide set, so you’re free to follow along on your own if you prefer.
Link offsite to the webinar on YouTube (1hr. 34 min.)
Link launches an on-site audio MP3 file (86MB, 1hr. 34 min.)
Link opens the PowerPoint slide set on this site (602kB, 24 slides)
To End the Pandemic, the COVID-19 Vaccine Must Clear One Final Obstacle
by Emma Betuel
Posted on the Inverse website, December 23, 2020
The FDA Slow-Walks the COVID-19 Vaccine Rollout, Prioritizing Public Confidence Over People’s Lives
Interview with Peter M. Sandman by Emma Betuel, December 3, 2020
Emma Betuel writes for Inverse, an online magazine chiefly for millennials. She wanted to ask me about how to build COVID-19 vaccine acceptance. I wanted to tell her about how the U.S. Food and Drug Administration was intentionally dragging its feet in the COVID-19 vaccine approval process. The interview focused mostly on my topic, but covered hers briefly as well. Not surprisingly, the article she eventually posted covered only her topic. This was not the first time I had failed to get the FDA slow-walking story out. I am also posting a brief note – but not brief enough to put here – on the backstory of my unsuccessful, ambivalent efforts to publish the FDA slow-walking story, culminating in this for-the-record audio post of my interview with Emma.
Vaccine Risk Communications with Dr. Peter Sandman and Richard Levick of LEVICK
Interview with Peter M. Sandman by Richard Levick, January 13, 2021 (part of Richard Levick’s “In House Warrior” podcast series, released January 20, 2021)
Richard Levick runs a crisis communication consulting firm, and churns out an incredible number of podcasts, including the daily “In House Warrior” series for Corporate Counsel Business Journal. Our 38-minute conversation covered some generic topics, starting with my three paradigms of risk communication and ending with my views on whether corporations should take stands on controversies. In the middle we focused on vaccine communication: what to do about vaccination hesitation; bandwagoning versus finger-wagging; what company COVID-19 vaccination policies should be; the politicization of masks and vaccines; key messages in this dark pandemic winter; etc.
Three Kinds of Zika Risk Communication
Part of a panel discussion (with Rob Stokes and Jill Hannaford),
Sydney Australia, February 15, 2016
In February 2016 I participated in a panel discussion on “Stakeholder Engagement Meets Outrage Management,” sponsored by the GHD consultancy (which had brought me to Sydney for several weeks of work with its clients). Near the end of the hour-long discussion, I was asked about the risk communication challenges of the Zika epidemic. I spoke for six minutes on how Zika requires all three kinds of risk communication: precaution advocacy, outrage management, and crisis communication.
In the description of the complete panel video on Vimeo, there is a link in the text to the beginning of this six-minute discussion: “(starting at 46:36).”
How Rational Are Our Fears of Ebola?
Edited interview with Jody Lanard by Jeremy Hobson of WBUR’s “Here & Now,” October 15, 2014; Aired on PBS, October 16, 2014
“Here & Now” telephoned my wife and colleague Jody Lanard on October 14, asking her to come into a New York City studio to tape an interview about whether Americans are overreacting to a domestic Ebola “crisis” that has so far resulted in just one death. She did the interview the next day. Jody stressed that it’s rational to pay attention to a risk you’re newly aware of, even if that attention is temporarily excessive, and that people will get past their temporary adjustment reaction more quickly if officials don’t label it irrational or panic. We have already decided how worried to be about flu, car crashes, and other familiar risks, she said. “We're not going to decide … that this is the week we should pay more attention to driving safety. This is the week we are going to learn about Ebola.”
Is Covid19 still a threat in a post-vaccinated world?
Video discussion on Bloomberg Quicktake, posted via Twitter, June 2, 2021
‘Covid Zero’ Risks Being ‘Covid Limbo’ Amid Slow Vaccine Uptake
by Jason Gale and Kurumi Mori
Posted on Bloomberg News, June 3, 2021
Despite its misleading title, this 33-minute video discussion on Bloomberg Quicktake had almost nothing to do with a post-vaccinated world. The Bloomberg News article about the discussion summarized it properly: It was mostly about the pre-vaccinated world of "COVID-Zero" places like Australia and Hong Kong. These are places that have kept COVID-19 out pretty successfully, and now they’re having trouble vaccinating their citizens so they can open up again to travel, tourism, etc. The risk communication perspective was (over)represented in the discussion by both me and my wife and colleague Jody Lanard. The third interviewee was Australian epidemiologist Greg Dore. We all basically agreed that COVID-Zero countries can’t turn themselves into 21st century Hermit Kingdoms, but we had somewhat different perspectives on who should decide when, how, and how much to open up.
Are People Panicking? Is Government Overreacting? Are the Media Sensationalizing? A Short Radio Debate with Someone Who Thinks So
Conversation with Clare Wenham and an unnamed newsreader on “Newshour,” BBC World Service Radio, March 5, 2020
On March 5 I received a phone call, a text, and an email from the BBC World Service radio program “Newshour,” asking if I could go on the air minutes later to debate COVID-19 fears and preparations with Clare Wenham, a London School of Economics professor. The producer quickly sent me Dr. Wenham's article, “Is reporting of the coronavirus producing viral panic?” which I skimmed just before we started. Our six-minute conversation skimmed lightly over the usual topics: Is the public panicking or going through a normal and useful adjustment reaction? Are governments overreacting or underreacting, and which is worse? What role is media sensationalism playing?
More Spin than Science: Risk Communication about the H5N1 Bioengineering Research Controversy (speech notes and audio)
Presented via telephone at a conference on “Freedom in Biological Research: How to Consider Accidental or Intentional Risks for Populations,” Fondation Mérieux and Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale, Veyrier-du-lac, France, February 8, 2013
The controversy over whether scientists should be allowed to bioengineer potentially pandemic bird flu viruses had pretty much died down by the time I was asked to speak at a February 2013 conference on the issue in France. Since I had criticized the controversy’s consistently miserable risk communication, I was delighted that at least one post mortem conference wanted a risk communication perspective. But I had prior commitments and couldn’t go. When the organizers invited me to present by telephone instead, I jumped at the chance. My speech notes are more extensive than I had time for in the actual presentation. On the other hand, the MP3 recording of the actual presentation includes about 25 minutes of Q&A. My presentation was mostly borrowed from my previous articles and Guestbook entries on the controversy, all of which are listed and linked at the end of the notes.
Official Ebola Risk Communication: “Don’t Scare the Children”
Interview with Peter M. Sandman by Betsy McKay of the Wall Street Journal, October 13, 2014
On October 13, 2014, at her request, I did a telephone interview with Betsy McKay of the Wall Street Journal on the way U.S. officials at the CDC were communicating about Ebola in Dallas. I focused at the start on my opinion that officials weren’t emphasizing Ebola uncertainties sufficiently; I relied especially on two examples of what I consider over-confident over-reassurance: whether Ebola sufferers always have a sudden onset of symptoms, and whether they’re never able to transmit the disease before those symptoms arrive. Later in the interview I turned to other Ebola risk communication issues. Among them: (a) The CDC’s rush to blame the nurse and the hospital system for a “breach of protocol” when she caught the disease from her patient, rather than suggesting that maybe the equipment or protocol might themselves be to blame; (b) My view that the widespread public fear about Ebola was not panic but simply a temporary adjustment reaction, and that the CDC should say so; and (c) My desire to see the CDC urge people to worry more about the possibility that the West African epidemic could spread through the developing world, instead of urging people simply to stop worrying about Ebola. Betsy didn’t end up writing any stories that made use of this interview, though maybe it was useful background for her. With her permission, I recorded my answers without her questions. I have cut some desultory conversation from the beginning and end of the audio file, but otherwise this is the whole interview. Remember, it took place on October 13: before the second nurse got sick, before the CDC decided it should recommend more protective PPE, etc.
Risk Communication in Healthcare Settings Podcasts
Taped for the British Columbia (Canada) Provincial Health Services Authority and Vancouver Coastal Health, February 15, 2011
This was a 50-minute telephone interview later divided into four podcasts. The third and fourth podcasts focus on healthcare-related scenarios and challenges, many of which involve infectious diseases. The first two are basically generic and are listed above in the “Introduction and Orientation” section.
3. Risk Communication Scenarios – Flu Shots, Hand-Washing, Ceiling Lifts, SARS
This audio clip identifies some risk communication strategies appropriate for four specific healthcare scenarios. Three of them – persuading healthcare workers to get their flu shots, to wash their hands often, and to use patient ceiling lifts – involve varying mixes of precaution advocacy and outrage management. The fourth – SARS – is a crisis communication scenario. The discussion of ceiling lifts gets into the “tranches” in thinking through employee safety communication. The discussion of SARS emphasizes the need to acknowledge uncertainty about an emerging crisis that might be horrific and might fizzle.
4. Risk Communication Challenges – Confidentiality, Uncertainty, Wrap-Up
This audio clip focuses on two challenges that healthcare communicators face often: confidentiality and uncertainty. The discussion of confidentiality emphasizes the difference between confidentiality as an excuse and real confidentiality problems, and offers some guidelines for handling the latter. The discussion of uncertainty argues for matter-of-factly acknowledging not just uncertainty but also differences of opinion within your organization. The podcast closes with a brief wrap-up on three key characteristics of good risk communication: honesty, empathy, and strategy.
Dr Norman Swan explains the risks versus the benefits of the AstraZeneca vaccine
Posted on the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) website and broadcast on the ABC television program “7:30,” May 5, 2021
Having posted a website comment on “COVID-19 Vaccine Blood Clots: Secrecy versus Pause versus Informed Consent,” I wasn’t too surprised to get an email from a producer of “7:30,” Australia’s leading nightly public affairs program, asking if their medical expert Dr. Norman Swan could interview me on the controversy – and on the risk communication challenge of convincing people not to overreact to tiny but scary risks. In our half-hour conversation, I emphasized that while the blood clot risk of some COVID-19 vaccines was indeed tiny, in Australia the risk of COVID-19 itself was also pretty small. So unlike Americans and Europeans, I said, most Australians could afford the luxury of waiting for a vaccine that scared them less to become available. ABC wouldn’t let me post the interview, but I did get permission to post the five-minute segment. There’s also a transcript of the segment on the ABC website.
Talking about the Vaccination-Autism Connection … to Somali Parents of Autistic Children
Interview with Peter M. Sandman by Lorna Benson, April 27, 2011
Lorna Benson of Minnesota Public Radio asked if she could interview me about a long-brewing controversy between the Somali community in Minnesota and state health officials over the high rate of autism among Somali children in Minnesota and the resurgence of measles in the Somali community because many Somali parents suspect a connection and choose not to vaccinate their kids. The 35-minute radio interview took place on April 27. It focused on ways I though the Minnesota Department of Health might deal more empathically with Somali concerns – and, more generally, on my criticism of the public health establishment for sometimes sounding more deeply committed to defending the safety of the MMR vaccine than to vaccinating kids against measles or seeking an answer to the riddle of autism. Lorna's story (“On day of vaccine forum, 2 more measles cases confirmed in Minn.”) ended up focusing mostly on a Minnesota “vaccination awareness forum” that had also taken place on April 27; toward the end of the story she linked some of my comments to some of what she had heard at the forum.
Risk Communication Before and During Epidemics
Presentation at “Bulls, Bears, and Birds: Preparing the Financial Industry for a Pandemic,” a September 23, 2005 New York City conference sponsored by the Center for Biosecurity of UPMC, Deutsche Bank, and Contingency Planning Exchange, Inc.
Despite the title, this brief speech focused mostly on pre-pandemic communication, and especially on the need to overcome official “fear of fear” and scare people into pandemic preparedness.
The CDC’s Pandemic Data versus the CDC’s Pandemic Communications: Outtakes from a Media Interview
On December 2, 2009, and again on December 15, I criticized the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in my “Swine Flu Pandemic Communication Update” for (in my view) intentionally misinterpreting its own data on the severity of the swine flu pandemic and on which age cohorts were most at risk. These criticisms aroused surprisingly little media interest. But a couple of reporters did call for interviews. Here are some excerpts from my side of one telephone interview. No story based on this interview ever materialized. The details are no longer of much interest, except as a pristine case study of successful CDC dishonesty.
This link launches a single on-site audio file (all 11 audio clips)
All 11 clips in one file (18MB, 19 min.)
Each of these links launches a single MP3 audio file.
Can we rely on the CDC’s November 12 data? (1.5MB, 1 min. 32 sec.)
The gap between technical information and public information 861 kB, 55 sec.
Risk to children versus risk to seniors
Part 1 (2.6MB, 2 min. 48 sec.)
Part 2 (1.2MB, 1 min. 17 sec.)
Pandemic risk versus seasonal flu risk (2.9MB, 3 min. 11 sec.)
The CDC’s reasons and my concerns
Part 1 (969 kB, 1 min. 1 sec.)
Part 2 (884 kB, 0 min. 54 sec.)
What I think the CDC should say (2.0MB, 2 min. 12 sec.)
Seasonal flu misunderstanding 1.3MB, 1 min. 22 sec.
Why honesty matters (1.4MB, 1 min. 30 sec.)
Trusting the public (1.9MB, 2 min. 01 sec.)
Two Bird Flu Pandemic Radio Interviews
In December 2005, at the height of public and expert concern about the possibility of a bird flu pandemic (which hasn’t materialized so far), Jon Hamilton of National Public Radio did a two-hour interview with me and my wife and colleague Jody Lanard. He later used the interview for two stories on NPR’s “Morning Edition.”
Staving Off Panic in a Flu Pandemic
by Jon Hamilton
Broadcast on “Morning Edition,” NPR (National Public Radio), January 10, 2006
This is the second “Morning Edition” story by NPR’s Jon Hamilton that draws on his two-hour December 2005 interview with me and my wife and colleague Jody Lanard. This one uses other sources as well, and focuses on what governments should do to avoid fostering panic in (or before) a pandemic. Hamilton makes good use of our concept of “panic panic” – official fear that the public may be panicking when there is no evidence that it is doing so.
Sifting Through Official Speak on Bird Flu
by Jon Hamilton
Broadcast on “Morning Edition,” NPR (National Public Radio), December 28, 2005
NPR’s Jon Hamilton came to New Jersey with a dozen audio clips of top U.S. officials talking about bird flu, and spent two hours going over the clips with me and my wife and colleague Jody Lanard. He put a little of what he got into an eight-minute story on what they’re doing right and what’s not so right in bird flu and pandemic risk communication. Jody and I think Hamilton did an excellent job of getting to some of the big issues: the need to find a balance between excessive fear and insufficient fear, the importance of getting the public involved rather than pretending the government will do it all, etc.
Seven Swine Flu Pandemic Radio Interviews
Among the radio interviews I gave during the swine flu pandemic of 2009–2010, these meet two technical specifications: They are still available online, and they address issues relevant to more than just that fading-into-history pandemic.
Flu Precautions: Making Sense of CDC Advice
by Deborah Franklin
Broadcast on NPR’s “Morning Edition,” November 6, 2009
The CDC website has detailed advice for parents with a child home sick with swine flu. But it’s not necessarily very practical or user-friendly advice. Deborah Franklin’s story on NPR’s “Morning Edition” features some of the ways the CDC’s recommendations might be a tad unrealistic. She used me to say the obvious: that there’s nothing wrong with telling parents how to achieve maximum infection control at home, but it would help to offer a Plan B for parents who can’t or won’t do it all. The link includes both the audio clip and a print version of the story from NPR’s website. Available on this site: An email I sent the reporter (“Prioritizing among Precautions: The Best Is the Enemy of the Good”) before the interview with some thoughts on public health professionals’ reluctance to help people prioritize among their recommended precautions.
Marketing Flu Vaccine: A Tough Sell for Many
by Richard Knox
Broadcast on NPR’s “All Things Considered,” November 2, 2009
Richard Knox interviewed me for nearly an hour on how I think the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention should speak to people who aren’t just worried about the safety of the swine flu vaccine, but are also mistrustful of government and not inclined simply to take the CDC’s word that the vaccine is safe. I talked a lot about the sorts of accountability mechanisms smart corporations use, and how the CDC could use similar approaches if it weren’t so deeply offended by people’s mistrust. The resulting story in “All Things Considered” used only a little of the interview, of course. The link includes both the audio clip and a print version of the story from NPR’s website.
Health Check
by Claudia Hammond
Broadcast on BBC World Service, May 10–12, 2009
“Health Check” is a weekly program on BBC radio. This audio clip deals with people’s emotional reactions to swine flu. It starts with a report from Mexico City, followed by an interview with me. I point out that officials suffer from “panic panic,” excessively worried that the public will panic, but that in most crisis situations (this one included) apathy is a much bigger problem than panic. I also talk about the role of denial, and emphasize that what officials need to do is to legitimize people’s fears – not tell them they shouldn’t be afraid.
H1N1 outbreak revealed seasonal flu lingered in Minn.
by Lorna Benson
Broadcast and posted on Minnesota Public Radio, May 6, 2009
This overview of recent swine flu developments discusses people’s sense that initial warnings were overblown, and includes my concern that authorities will hesitate to risk still more credibility by doing what they should do: warn people that swine flu may still pose a serious threat and that they should use the current calm to get better prepared. This site has both a transcript and an audio file.
Communicating the Message of Swine Flu: An Expert’s Opinion
by Grace Hood
Broadcast on KUNC radio, May 5, 2009
Grace Hood made a mistake at the start of this four-minute interview when she said I told her some people are panicking about swine flu. And I overstated things pretty badly myself when I said that at the start of the outbreak the experts were “on the phone in the middle of the night” worrying that swine flu might be “the granddaddy of all pandemics.” Despite both errors, this is a pretty solid interview on two key points I keep stressing: (a) that a good pandemic warning needs to be simultaneously scary and tentative; and (b) that the U.S. government didn’t do much to urge people to prepare when it looked like a severe pandemic might be imminent, so it’s hard to imagine it’ll do more now that the sense of imminence has gone.
Swine Flu Questions and Answers
by Lisa Mullins (interview with Peter M. Sandman and Christine Gorman)
Broadcast on PRI’s “The World” (National Public Radio), April 30, 2009
Long-time health journalist Christine Gorman and I chatted with host Lisa Mullins for about 20 minutes. PRI used about half of it. I spent a lot of my time riding my hobbyhorse that the government needs to do more to urge people to prepare in case a serious pandemic is around the corner. But Lisa got us talking about other things as well, notably why it doesn’t make a lot of sense to close the Mexican border when lots of people on this side of the border are already carrying the flu virus, while lots of trucks on the other side are carrying goods we need.
Swine Flu Precautions: Figuring Out Which Ones Make Sense
by Stephen Evans (interview with Peter M. Sandman)
Broadcast on BBC World Service “Business Daily,” April 29, 2009
This is only marginally about risk communication. The “Business Daily” reporter’s working hypothesis was that swine flu precautions – individual and societal – are excessive given how few people have died compared to the fatalities from many other risks (worker accidents, for example, not to mention the seasonal flu). I tried to explain that what’s scary about swine flu isn’t what has already happened; it’s what might (or might not) happen. It’s hard to choose precautions when the risk in question could end up catastrophic or trivial or anywhere in the middle. Going further and further beyond my field of expertise, I ended up explaining why I think dispersing antivirals nearer to population centers probably makes sense and closing airports probably doesn’t. The editors pretty much left my risk communication points on the cutting room floor (the psychological benefits of taking precautions, for example), and ran with my off-the-cuff amateur opinions about infection management. Not their fault, of course; I was the one answering the damn questions.
Fundamentals of risk communication: How to talk to patients and the public about pandemic H1N1
Presented to the European Respiratory Society international conference, Vienna, Austria, September 14, 2009
Note: Despite its title, this audio clip is mostly introduction to risk communication, with just passing references to pandemic communication.
The European Respiratory Society invited me give a 20-minute presentation on pandemic communication at its annual conference, as part of a panel on various aspects of pandemic H1N1. I pleaded for an extra hour right afterwards to go into more detail for those who wanted it. Some 20,000 respiratory disease doctors attended the conference; roughly 2,000 of them were at the panel; about 200 followed me to a smaller room for my extra hour (which I did jointly with my wife and colleague Jody Lanard, an M.D.). Only the panel presentation is posted on the ERS website. It’s mostly an introduction to the basics of risk communication (hazard versus outrage; precaution advocacy versus outrage management versus crisis communication), with some quick comments on the implications for pandemic communication. The meat was in the hour that followed, which unfortunately wasn’t recorded.
Copyright © 2021 by Peter M. Sandman
Link to the offsite Zoom file on Vimeo (66 min.) 
Link off-site to Peak Prosperity site with the video of this interview.
