Earlier articles on this website about CDC’s reputational issues in the COVID pandemic:
- CDC’s Public Communication about COVID-19: Maybe Going Silent Is an Improvement (April 7, 2020)
- The CDC’s Massive Loss of Credibility Is Partly Because of the Spokespeople It Used (September 25, 2020)
- Resuscitating CDC’s Reputation (January 18 – March 16, 2021)
- CDC’s Reputation Takes Another Hit When Walensky Says Vaccinated People Can Take Off Their Masks (May 20, 2021)
- More Independence from the White House Would Help Rebuild Damaged Federal Agency Reputations – So Would More Tolerance of Diverse Opinion (July 20, 2021)
CDC’s loss of trust is real. It’s no longer just anti-vaxxers and Trump supporters who mistrust the agency. People who are worried about Omicron and determined to do the right thing are public health’s “home team” – and they too are losing trust in the agency.
CDC’s single biggest communication failing among many: the failure to provide a steady stream of expert explanation to journalists – to all journalists, from experienced public health reporters who ask about the implications of the latest research to novice general assignment reporters who need help getting the basics right.
In every previous public health crisis (even little ones), CDC has done presser after presser – not at the White House but at CDC headquarters in Atlanta; not just with the director but with real subject matter experts on hand. President Trump shut down CDC pressers after he got angry at CDC’s Nancy Messonnier for sounding the alarm in February 2020. Everyone thought President Biden would reinstate them. He didn’t.
It’s not too late for CDC to rebuild trust. It’s never too late. But a precondition for getting another chance is telling the truth about your prior screw-ups. My clients have always hated that. “Can’t we just start doing it right?” they endlessly asked me. “Do we really have to admit we’ve been doing it wrong?” The answer is yes.
At CDC head Rochelle Walensky’s news conference last week – her first since summer – the very first question (from the Washington Post’s Lena Sun) focused on whether she thought she’d lost some trust and what she thought she’d been doing wrong. It was exactly the chance she needed to own up and start over. Instead, she dodged the question.
If I were advising CDC, I’d urge it to schedule an “endless presser” tomorrow. Put Dr. Walensky in a room with half a dozen subject matter experts, and vow to take questions for as long as necessary until there were no more questions. In my imaginary endless presser, Dr. Walensky would say outright that the precondition for a new start is candor about past mistakes, and she would especially welcome questions along those lines. She’d also insist that the experts behind her feel free to add their own mea culpas and their own critiques of her performance. She’d hire an external facilitator authorized to tell her to try again if any question had been dodged instead of fully answered. And she’d alternate between questions from reporters and questions from ordinary citizens – so everyone including the reporters could see what was really on people’s minds.
And she would keep holding such endless pressers at least twice a week for the duration of the pandemic.
A lot of people have criticized CDC messaging as insufficiently simple. That’s not my criticism. Let the White House articulate whatever “misoversimplifications” it chooses. What’s priceless and irreplaceable from CDC – and desperately missing – is its willingness to explain the complexities of its recommendations, grounded as they are not just in uncertain science but also in conflicting priorities other than science. Explain them again and again. And yes, try to simplify them for audiences that want them simplified – but keep right on explaining the complexities for audiences that want them explained.
I concede that CDC has done a crappy job of simplifying its recommendations. But I think a much more important failure is its failure to explain the complexities of those recommendations – especially its failure to be honest that the science is uncertain and that the recommendations are grounded in more than just science – in what’s feasible, in what people will tolerate, in economic impacts, etc.
Copyright © 2022 by Peter M. Sandman
