{"id":481,"date":"2011-03-31T13:03:52","date_gmt":"2011-03-31T17:03:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/jmsmith\/?p=481"},"modified":"2011-05-17T11:29:23","modified_gmt":"2011-05-17T15:29:23","slug":"0-1-8-or-2026-how-many-makes-a-crisis-part-1-of-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/jmsmith\/2011\/03\/31\/0-1-8-or-2026-how-many-makes-a-crisis-part-1-of-4\/","title":{"rendered":"0, 1, 8, or 2026?  How many makes a crisis? (Part 1 of 4)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline\"><strong>Foot-and-mouth disease hoax in New Zealand<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/jmsmith\/files\/2011\/04\/Hoax.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-482\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/jmsmith\/files\/2011\/04\/Hoax-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/jmsmith\/files\/2011\/04\/Hoax-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/jmsmith\/files\/2011\/04\/Hoax-1024x682.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>In 2005 a letter was sent to New Zealand\u2019s minister of agriculture (similar to our federal Secretary of Agriculture) claiming that foot-and-mouth disease had been released on Waiheke Island, a small island just north of Auckland (on the North Island).\u00a0 While the possibility of the threat being a hoax was considered very likely, steps were taken to immediately communicate with farmers and the public regarding the situation.\u00a0 Just under a week later a second letter was received by a newspaper.\u00a0 Shortly after, the threat was officially declared a hoax.\u00a0 No cases of disease occurred, but the response still required a significant deployment of government resources.<\/p>\n<p>The response to the situation is held up as an example of a good crisis communication (Ch. 7 of <em>Effective Risk Communication: A Message-Centered Approach<\/em> by Timothy Sellnow and others).\u00a0 It is interesting that farmers were upset when the media started calling them before they had heard about the situation from the government.\u00a0 A hotline for farmers to call was established and public meetings were held to facilitate two-way communication about the situation.\u00a0 Veterinary surveillance was conducted and reporting of suspicious signs was encouraged.\u00a0 When the threat was confirmed to be a hoax and no signs of disease had been seen, the crisis was over.\u00a0 While some would say a crisis was averted, my take is that the crisis in this situation did not escalate and was resolved in a short period of time.<\/p>\n<p>If only it was always that easy.<\/p>\n<address><em>Continued on Part 2 of 4<\/em><br \/>\n<\/address>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Foot-and-mouth disease hoax in New Zealand In 2005 a letter was sent to New Zealand\u2019s minister of agriculture (similar to our federal Secretary of Agriculture) claiming that foot-and-mouth disease had been released on Waiheke Island, a small island just north &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/jmsmith\/2011\/03\/31\/0-1-8-or-2026-how-many-makes-a-crisis-part-1-of-4\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":439,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15823,15824,15826],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fmd-news","category-just-my-thoughts","category-one-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/jmsmith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/jmsmith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/jmsmith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/jmsmith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/439"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/jmsmith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=481"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/jmsmith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":512,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/jmsmith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481\/revisions\/512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/jmsmith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/jmsmith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/jmsmith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}