There is a term that is used a lot in large companies when there is some embarrassing problem, and you have to decide what to say to people. And as if that were not enough, it must be said in order to protect the "core business", by selling a story that does not damage the turnover too much.
This operation is called “storytelling”, and is made up of some specialists who, together with the management, decide how to avoid extreme damage. How do you recognize storytelling? Not from the fact that it is limited to absolving, because the experts decide that component A of the company can take some blame, but from the fact that storytelling always comes to put a patch on the wrong communication of the same company.
AstraZeneca's vaccine history is an example.
Nothing strange is happening in itself:
if there was a cause-and-effect relationship between vaccine and thrombosis in predisposed people, we would limit ourselves to using (on those people) another vaccine among those available.
It is a fairly well known procedure. This is why you have contraindications on practically every drug. People have a medical history and contraindications are for that.
So the precautionary block is absolutely rational and scientific. And at worst, we'll just prescribe another vaccine on those who are predisposed to thrombosis.
There would therefore be a mitigation solution, that is to continue with Astrazeneca except in cases of people predisposed to thrombosis. That is, you take the worst case and you notice that it is not so expensive: just assume that it is, and you notice that to mitigate the risks "just" remove from the list of vaccinators with AstraZeneca those who are predisposed.
I repeat this because it is a concept that seems complicated to understand for the average journalist.
But then why the panic and blockages?
Here one should ask the press itself. Who told the people that Denmark had blocked the vaccine? Do people get up in the morning, after learning Danish, and go online to check if there is something rotten in Denmark? I don't think so: you heard from the press. And how did the population know that there had been cases of thrombosis in Italy? Again, the press. And how did you know that 10 other nations had blocked vaccination? Again, the press.
If you are looking for the culprit of the vaccine "distrust pandemic", you just have to open a newspaper and read the name. The pandemic of distrust is due to the fact that the newspapers created it.
The problem is that now they don't know how to stop the effects of the epidemic of distrust that they themselves have created. And this is why I speak of storytelling: storytelling almost always serves to remedy a previous disastrous communication.
I clarify my Bias: from my point of view, as I have already said, I do not trust AstraZeneca. However, if it gives problems on those predisposed to thrombosis, the solution would be to write it in the "contraindications" and not administer it to those predisposed.
The problem is that the newspapers, in search of adrenaline-pumping news, have pumped about the side effects of AstraZeneca, and now they are looking for a storytelling to remedy the disaster.
Now the usual ones will come saying “but if there is news the newspapers MUST give it”. Which is not true: too many things happen in the world for newspapers to give them all: for example, it has happened that England has violated the Brexit agreements and is in danger of ruining the Good Friday agreements. . ( https://www.dw.com/en/brexit-eu-takes-legal-action-against-uk-over-northern-ireland/a-56873761 )
But no Italian newspaper reported it. So it is not true that “if the news is there, the good journalist will bring it back”. The reporter reports what the boss tells him to report. Point.
Having said that, now we are trying to remedy this with storytelling. And it turns out that the country that last stopped vaccinating with AstraZeneca is the one to blame for the blockade. Interesting. And we find that countries, which blocked vaccination even earlier, are angered by the country that blocked it last.
If this is your storytelling level, you are in really bad shape.
Because this storytelling leaves a malice open. I'm sure that's not true, and I'm sure that's not the case. But you must understand that there is a propaganda war going on, and someone very malicious could be maligning.
What is needed is absolutely FALSE, but it is the story that this storytelling allows for the mischievous. What do I know, the Russians.
As you know, journalists know things before ordinary people. So, if AstraZeneca has an Italian office, then they knew about the vaccine's existence in time. "For time" means that the financial companies behind the newspapers had a chance to buy shares. And if you consider that AstraZeneca was a shabby company before, and look at how much the shares have grown, by buying before the others they made a lot of money.
But the problem now is, if the stock goes down, a lot of people lose a lot of money. And therefore, it is necessary to save Private AstraZeneca.
But I repeat, when above it is absolutely FALSE: in times of pandemics, in fact, it is very rational to buy shares of pharmaceutical companies that work on the vaccine, let's say all of them, so it is possible that there is no abuse of the journalistic skills behind the copious purchases that also characterize companies that invest in printing.
But you know, once you shovel shit, something always remains.
So, in general, I suggest a more rational storytelling:
"If AstraZeneca also causes thrombosis in predisposed subjects, the rational solution is to use another vaccine on these subjects".
If, on the other hand, your alternative is "panic / not panic", then it all boils down to the decision "buy the shares / sell the shares", and therefore the Russian evil who fann malvagyia propadanda would be happy to say that you want to save AstraZeneca because you have in the belly a lot of actions.
And there is no storytelling that can resist the gossip.
