Dear CDC
Dear Centers for Disease Control,
I write to you today as a concerned citizen. For the last 18 months, you have been in the unenviable position of offering guidance to a worried populous… and in truth, the world. Your organization has been arguably underfunded, and has no actual authority to enact policy. I understand these constraints, and yet am disappointed by your work in this pandemic.
It’s become clear that as an organization of elite scientists tasked with gathering information and offering guidance to policy makers, you suffer from two things. First, your organization is singularly designed to Control Disease, despite the obvious problem that disease control has to be balanced with other personal and societal goals. Second, the audience for your guidance apparently changed from medical experts to lay people without a commensurate increase in communications personnel.
I believe the CDC could take a page from biotech/medical device industry product managers to avoid some of the current problems in the pandemic.
Lesson One: Educate Your Customer
CDC guidance around prevention of a virus, requires people to have a working understanding of viruses. Companies have long realized it is often up to them to educate the customer. That is why there are commercials explaining that symptoms may actually be a treatable disease.
People needed to be reminded that viruses are not alive, and cannot continue to “live” on surfaces. That a single virus particle is unlikely to cause an infection, rather it takes a large exposure. That the symptoms one feels and the COVID disease are largely their own bodies overreacting - the virus itself cannot cause harm to a person in the way that the AIDS virus does. Most importantly that not everyone is at equal risk. It’s not an indiscriminate tsunami, and even with the most deadly viruses, not everyone gets sick.
If you think your customers are too dumb to understand what they need to, and treat them that way, you have no right selling to them. Take the time to educate your customer and you’ll get much happier customers.
Lesson Two: If You Can’t Fix It, Feature It
After asking the question “why would a customer want my product?” the next, and perhaps more important question is “why would a customer NOT want my product?”
You can’t solve for everything, and when there is a fundamental feature (ie. must be taken daily) that you know customers will dislike, address it head on! There is a saying; “if you can’t fix it, feature it.”
Anyone could reasonably have predicted that people would be concerned at the speed at which a vaccine was released. The CDC could have created a website explaining how old and well-tested mRNA technology actually is. And though it’s the first mRNA vaccine, how the breadth of the clinical study stacks up against the original studies for polio or other vaccines. You could feature the speed. Talk up how this unlocks a future where vaccines can be created rapidly, on demand. And for those folks who are scared that vaccines “stay in the body” you could easily generate and report data proving that the mRNA vaccines actually self-destruct.
Think of all the great TikTok videos!
You also could have used all that time we were sitting around recommending people say home glued to a screen to work to build functioning vaccine appointment websites. The logistics of sign-up and distribution were always going to be a problem. By signing people up early, showing them how they would be prioritized, and how their lives would change, we could create buy in.
Lesson Three: Engage Early and Often
No company releases a product without first having built up significant support for it among the voices that matter. That means the doctors who are going to use or recommend the product. But every disease also has a patient advocacy organization. You always reach out to them to ask what they care about and how you can help. From there, you tailor your marketing messages to make sure they address those folks concerns and needs.
The CDC has offices all over. What if you had done focus groups with vaccine hesitant Americans? You would have learned that distrust of pharmaceutical companies, fear of the “newness”, and a moral foundation around fairness and purity were top concerns.
All of these are addressable. You knew in March 2020 that the only road out was a vaccine. Perhaps much of your money spent on very confusing infographics could have been moved over to early engagement and messaging. Again, imagine the TikTok videos!!
When this is all over, there will be a call for additional funding to your organization. You will want to put it all into shiny new lab space, probably running dangerous lab experiments, but RESIST. Your mission is to guide Americans in the control of disease, and in that regard, proper, timely communication is more important that a new lab.
Kindly,
Meenal
