Tag Archives: grateful dead

Coronavirus communication and trust

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The global coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has already had an enormous impact and will surely have profound consequences for many years to come.

The authors reflect on three risk communication themes related to the pandemic: trust, tradeoffs, and preparedness. Trust is critically important during such a rapidly evolving event characterized by scientific uncertainty. Reflections focus on uncertainty communication, transparency, and long-term implications for trust in government and science. On tradeoffs, the positive and unintended negative effects of three key risk communication messages are considered (1) stay at home, (2) some groups are at higher risk, and (3) daily infections and deaths.

The authors argue that greater attention to message ‘tradeoffs’ over ‘effectiveness’ and ‘evaluation’ over ‘intuition’ would help guide risk communicators under pressure. On preparedness, past infectious disease outbreak recommendations are examined. Although COVID-19 was inevitably ‘unexpected’, important preparedness actions were largely overlooked such as building key risk communication capacities.

COVID-19: Reflections on trust, tradeoffs, and preparedness, April 2020

Journal of Risk Research

Dominic HP Balog-Way and Katherine A McComas

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/340958173_COVID-19_Reflections_on_trust_tradeoffs_and_preparedness/references?utm_medium=email&utm_source=researchgate&utm_campaign=re413&loginT=iZBjE6QqKQDtgm9mIth3elm18k_fuz-NWD_VJXbuMq0_VSlbSUu0QyWSAb06_bTWyEX92MLG8X_6SgQ&pli=1&utm_term=re413_p_pb&utm_content=re413_p_pb_p4&cp=re413_p_pb_p4&uid=nL3zUTnj0PdkgYxg8hJW1mCbrq7iJZlhMSga&ch=reg

When our eldest daughter was about six-weeks-old in 1987, my ex and I took her to a Grateful Dead concert at an outdoor amphitheater north of Toronto. We sat at the back. The dead did this Buddy Holly song as part of their encore and it was fabulous.

Same as it ever was: David Byrne explains food safety failures on SNL last week

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It was probably 2009 that me and Amy and the 6-month old kid went on a southern U.S. road trip, featuring many stops to breastfeed, and many talks.

Sure, it wasn’t the same as me and the ex taking our now 33-year old to see the Grateful Dead north of Toronto when she was 6-weeks old, but it was cool (the Dead went back to Americana roots in 1970 and 71, producing two albums that had nothing to do with psychedelia and everything to do with, we are America, this is our music).  The theme of the 2009 road trip was, how did food safety get so shitty (see future posts). I found resonance in The Talking Heads, and David Byrne resurrected the iconic song which was the soundtrack of my 2009 tour last week on Saturday Night Live.

I have great memories of that trip, but now, all I have is memories, and they are fading fast.

Enjoy.

 

Uh-huh: Lactalis says no salmonella in baby milk at second production line

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But what about that first production line?

That’s me and Madelynn in 1987, the photo I used for my science column (Madelynn is 31 and has a 5-year-old; our hair was, and still is fabulous; she went and saw the Grateful Dead when she was 6-weeks-old)

Channel News Asia reports that Lactalis, the world’s largest dairy group, on Friday (Nov 30) rejected media reports that salmonella had been detected in baby milk from a second production line at a French factory where contaminated milk led to dozens of babies falling ill last year.

The salmonella outbreak at the Craon plant in northwest France led Lactalis to recall millions of tins of baby milk in France and around the world, and drew criticism from politicians and consumer groups about a lack of transparency at the company, which is privately held by the Besnier family.

Oh, France.

Citing an internal report by French health authorities last December in the midst of the product recall, French media reported that two types of salmonella had been detected by Lactalis in products made in the second dryer at Craon.

The company denied this, saying in a statement that a sentence quoted by media was incorrect.

“We confirm that there was no positive test for salmonella in products from the dryer no. 2 before this dryer was halted in December 2017,” Lactalis said in its statement.

My five daughters were all breastfed, and I’m grateful for that. No formula ever touched their mouths.

Internet: Freedom’s just another word

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Irony can be ironic sometimes.

This morning I was e-mail chatting with a friend, talking about how I took Madelynn, who is now 30-years-old, to a Grateful Dead concert north of Toronto when she was six-weeks -old.

Later today, word came that Dead songwriter and Internet activist John Perry Barlow had passed at the age of 70.

I was fortunate enough to have met Barlow three or four times in the early 1990s, when he was creating a stir about Internet freedom – even before Al Gore had invented it – at the SIGGRAPH annual meetings.

That’s Special Interest Group – Graphics, which now dominate Western media and culture.

I got to hang out with the Pixar execs, knew why shadows from a lamp named Luxo were special, and have a beverage or two with Barlow.

With a broken heart I have to announce that EFF’s founder, visionary, and our ongoing inspiration, passed away quietly in his sleep this morning. We will miss Barlow and his wisdom for decades to come, and he will always be an integral part of EFF.

It is no exaggeration to say that major parts of the Internet we all know and love today exist and thrive because of Barlow’s vision and leadership. He always saw the Internet as a fundamental place of freedom, where voices long silenced can find an audience and people can connect with others regardless of physical distance.

Barlow was sometimes held up as a straw man for a kind of naive techno-utopianism that believed that the Internet could solve all of humanity’s problems without causing any more. As someone who spent the past 27 years working with him at EFF, I can say that nothing could be further from the truth. Barlow knew that new technology could create and empower evil as much as it could create and empower good. He made a conscious decision to focus on the latter: “I knew it’s also true that a good way to invent the future is to predict it. So I predicted Utopia, hoping to give Liberty a running start before the laws of Moore and Metcalfe delivered up what Ed Snowden now correctly calls ‘turn-key totalitarianism.’”

Barlow’s lasting legacy is that he devoted his life to making the Internet into “a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth . . . a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity.”

In the days and weeks to come, we will be talking and writing more about what an extraordinary role Barlow played for the Internet and the world. And as always, we will continue the work to fulfill his dream.

Truckin: FDA releases final rule to ensure food safety during transport

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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today finalized a new food safety rule under the landmark FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) that will help to prevent food contamination during transportation.

truckinThe rule will require those involved in transporting human and animal food by motor or rail vehicle to follow recognized best practices for sanitary transportation, such as properly refrigerating food, adequately cleaning vehicles between loads and properly protecting food during transportation.

The action is part of a larger effort to focus on prevention of food safety problems throughout the food chain, and the rule implements the Sanitary Food Transportation Act of 2005 (SFTA) as well as the requirement in section 111 of FSMA that instructed FDA to issue SFTA regulations. The regulation will apply to food transported within the United States by motor or rail vehicle, whether or not the food is offered for or enters interstate commerce. Shippers, loaders, carriers and receivers engaged in transportation operations of food imported by motor or rail vehicle and consumed or distributed in the United States are also subject to the final rule.

“Consumers deserve a safe food supply and this final rule will help to ensure that all those involved in the farm-to-fork continuum are doing their part to ensure that the food products that arrive in our grocery stores are safe to eat,” said Michael R. Taylor, the FDA’s deputy commissioner for foods and veterinary medicine.

The rule was proposed in February 2014 and takes into consideration more than 200 comments submitted by the transportation industry, food industry, government regulatory partners, international trading partners, consumer advocates, tribal organizations and others. It also builds on the transportation industry’s best practices for cleaning, inspecting, maintaining, loading and unloading and operating vehicles and transportation equipment.

Implementation of the sanitary transportation rule and all FSMA final rules will require partnership, education and training.