When WHO, CDC, and ECDC responded to the Andes virus outbreak on the MV Hondius, none of their official documents mentioned Covid-19 once. Yet every framing choice was built around preventing that comparison. A look at what institutional risk communication looks like five years after the pandemic that nobody wants to name again.
In the early 1990s, while living in Tanzania, I sometimes carried vaccine vials for my infant daughter inside a thermos packed with ice, navigating a healthcare system where having a hospital nearby did not always mean having access. Years later, that experience still shapes how I think about global health communication: because before people trust the science, they often need to trust the system, the messenger… and the reality behind the message.
We like to think we understand risk, facts, and data. But most of the time, what we’re really reacting to are the words wrapped around them.
From “forecast” to “projection,” from “possible” to “probable,” small linguistic shifts quietly reshape how we interpret reality.
Numbers are everywhere — and they\\\’re not just counting things. They\\\’re nudging your clicks, inflating your grocery bill, and making climate data feel either catastrophic or completely irrelevant, depending on how someone frames it. The difference between a statistic that changes minds and one that gets ignored? It\\\’s rarely the data. It\\\’s almost always the packaging.
In a classroom exercise, I show three simple images: a floppy disk, a cassette with a pencil, and a pair of smart glasses. Same room. Same visuals. Completely different reactions. What people recognise — and what they don’t — reveals something deeper about how we process meaning.
When we say “Any questions?”, we imagine curiosity. What we actually invite is negotiation. Over time, I learned that the Q&A is not about having the right answers. It is about managing uncertainty, ego, and attention in real time — and understanding that credibility is built not when we speak, but when we respond.
Risk is not a single concept, and it does not travel in a single language. How we talk about it depends on our disciplinary background as much as on our audience — and many communication gaps start long before we begin to adapt our message.
A belt in a shop. A lost look from an 18-year-old assistant. And a realization: we don’t just speak different languages — we think through different operating systems. From Boomers to Gen Alpha, this article explores how internet generations shape the way we search, trust, and understand information — and why simple words are not always enough.
Risk is not a single concept, and it does not travel in a single language. How we talk about it depends on our disciplinary background as much as on our audience — and many communication gaps start long before we begin to adapt our message.
This isn’t a manual. It’s a reminder: colour is never just colour.
It’s culture, power, habits, identity — basically, us. This book comes from serious research and takes a very unserious route.
Read it if you like learning whilela ughing and feeling just a little bit uncomfortable.