Responses to Warning: Chicken Little vs. the Ostrich

Former Assistant Surgeon General Susan J. Blumenthal makes a good comparison in this morning’s WaPo. Responding to a question on the threat from Avian Flu, she remarks:

How real is the threat of an avian flu pandemic?

On the question of are we more vulnerable, there is the group of people I call the ostriches and the Chicken Little. The ostriches point out that we have better science and public health than ever before, that we have not seen the H5N1 virus here. The Chicken Little say we do not have enough antiviral [medications]; we don't have a vaccine. The threat is probably somewhere in between.

Institutions, including the mainstream media, seem to respond to forecasted threats by becoming ostriches or chicken’s little.

Ostrich responses include:
• The City of New Orleans’ failure to prepare for Katrina
• The National Conference of Catholic Bishops ignoring warnings about a pedophilia crises
• The Bush administration’s failure to heed career intelligence officers when they raised warning flags about the sources of reports on WMD and Al Qaeda in Iraq.
• Failure to heed a long series of warnings about safety viloations at the Sago mine.

Among the chicken little responses we have:
• The warnings that the Hong Kong flu, Swine flu and West Nile Virus could kill as many people as did the Spanish flu of 1918 (40 million).
• Global cooling
• Global Warming (so far)
• Terrorist attacks using WMD (so far)

The problem, of course, is separating the ostriches from the chicken’s little. It is only in hindsight that we know the difference.

My hunch is that we tend to be ostriches when we see a disaster coming – but it might not and preparation would be painful. If the probability is low, and preparation is difficult, denial is a good strategy. Without it we would be running around every time a chicken little comes by.Institutions, just like persons, can practice denial.

We tend to be chickens little when we see a disaster coming – but want some one else, preferably the government, to do something about it.

The all-too human response is this: If it is hard to prepare, be an ostrich and hide your head: if you want someone else to prepare, be a chicken little and run around saying that the sky is falling.

Maybe what we need is an old crow sitting on the telephone pole. Crows warn when the see real danger. If the crow gets the West Nile virus we can always try some Old Crow - except that the distillery is closed.

NOTE: this posting linked to Outside the Beltway for 01/05/2006