Mandy Cohen, New CDC Director, Outlines Three Steps to Re-Building Public Trust

I'm skeptical - of course - but at least she has moved on from "better messaging".

After Ebola, in 2014, the debacle was boiled down by the CDC to a lack of sufficiently clear, non-confusing messaging - and we need more funding to do that well.

In other words, they were unable to communicate their ideas, programs, policies, and agenda (PPA well enough to be as effective as they possibly could be.

In other words, our PPA is perfect - if only everyone walked in lockstep with us, everything would be so much better.

That’s narcissistic - nothing wrong with me, project guilt and shame and responsibility on others.

It’s also a form of denial.

They should have, each time, simply said “We got it wrong”.

In the same way, they should have said, when it was true “We don’t know”.

Of course, CDC has been exceptionally good at denial - from denying any link between vaccines and autism, vaccines and autoimmunity, vaccines and anything but a happy day.

But “confusing messaging” is not the same thing as “being dead wrong”.

Imagine if a manufacturer of a commercial product tried over and over to convince its investors that the public does want their product, it’s just that they need better marketing. But the public does not want the product. That strategy will wear thin very quickly.

Mandy’s New Plan

Ever since Dr. Mandy Cohen took the reins at CDC, I’ve been using the hashtags #AskMandy and #AskMandy CDC to ask her if she will make public service announcements about matters that are important for public health.

Now, in an interview with NPR, Mandy has outlined 3 steps that she says are necessary to rebuild public trust.

In a shocking move, she did not blame messaging (although NPR said her plan was motivated by unclear messaging).

Here are her three new steps, with my reaction.

1. Cohen: “First is making sure that we are being transparent. We're having clear communications that are simple and accurate, that folks can understand, that they know that there are common sense solutions for them to protect their health.”

   JLW: Kudos, yes, 100% on transparency! Yes, to communications that are “simple and accurate”, as long as the communication includes (as needed) (a) “We don’t know, and we’re seeking input from the vast scientific community across the US, we’ll let you know more the minute we know more”, and (b) “Last week, we said X. We now have new information that tells us that WE WERE WRONG. Let’s unpack how this happened…” without rationalizing, giving any excuses. The public will not tolerate excuse-making. Just the fact. Raw, no matter how hard to swallow. Later in the article, the interviewer had to give you the idea of saying “We don’t know”. The author of the interview put that at the end to emphasize it for you. That leaves us with doubts.

2. Cohen: “(t)he second is making sure that we execute or have good performance in what the CDC is meant to do. And so making sure that we are doing what we say we're going to do. Just as you trust in your own personal life, I want to make sure that you trust that we are going to to do that for you.”

   JLW: The fact is that many people have taken personal responsibility for their health, and the last thing they want is the CDC telling them what to do. This includes laypeople and professionals from all walks of life. When you say “we execute or have good performance in what the CDC is meant to do”, we say “What is CDC’s charter?” That might be worth revisiting. Because CDC is REALLY BAD at what they do. I know your language was promised to be plain and simple… so in #2 here, why didn’t you say “The CDC has a terrible track record, we are really bad at what we’re supposed to do, so we’re bringing in an independent performance auditor to compare what we do to truly effective large organizations”.

3. Cohen: “And the third, very important, is about building relationships and partnership. Protecting the health of this country is a team sport. And so those are that we need to bring partners together in order to protect people's health. We can't do it alone from the CDC.”

   JLW: When we read this, we read “We’ll give Pharma even more control over what we do.” Your messaging is not transparent here: Who are these “partners”? In your other statement in the same article, you mention that Congress is an important “partner”, revealing that you do not really understand that CDC answers to Congressional mandates. Where is the pledge to start issuing, every two years, summaries of vaccine safety as mandated by Congress, which has not been done even once?

   In a related NBC News Article, the author of the article wrote that Cohen was going to combat “vaccine misinformation”, and claimed that Robert F. Kennedy., Jr. claimed that “CDC” lied about the COVID-19 vaccine without any evidence.

   Cohen knows what we know. She knows the unwarranted claims made by Wolensky. They were stated in simple terms. They were clear. They were repeated.

   Yet they were false.

   We Need Independent Research, Not Centralized Dogma

   At IPAK, our mission is to conduct research in the public interest to reduce human pain and suffering through knowledge without profit motive. Why fund CDC to do any research when they answer to the profit motives of their “partners”?

   What is the mission statement of the CDC? From their Mission webpage:
   

   “CDC works 24/7 to protect America from health, safety and security threats, both foreign and in the U.S. Whether diseases start at home or abroad, are chronic or acute, curable or preventable, human error or deliberate attack, CDC fights disease and supports communities and citizens to do the same. CDC increases the health security of our nation. As the nation’s health protection agency, CDC saves lives and protects people from health threats. To accomplish our mission, CDC conducts critical science and provides health information that protects our nation against expensive and dangerous health threats, and responds when these arise.

   Fear-based. Authority-generating. And complete with at least two errors in punctuation.

   On the same page, we see a link to a 2022-2027 Strategic Plan. When we click on that, we learn that the plan is “Advancing Science & Health Equity”.

   We need to talk about definitions. By “Science” do you mean “Science”, or, as we’ve seen from CDC for 30 years, “Science-Like Activities” aka demonstration projects designed to find a preferred outcome?

   By “Health Equity”, do you mean “helping to identify the specific health deficiencies in certain populations” or do you mean “subtracting health from healthy people to make sure everyone is equally badly off”?

   Notably, we see very little in the way of vaccines on the face of it.

   Trust cannot be asserted; it has to be earned. But I do not think it is trust that we’re talking about here.

   The term we should be talking about is “reputation”. The CDC has lost the public’s trust due to a loss in credibility. It has earned a very poor reputation.

   I laud the language on transparency, and that finally, a CDC Director has admitted to the importance of being able to admit ignorance and error.

   On those points, we shall see, but I think we know what we can expect.

Related (not a recommendation!): New CDC director to combat vaccine misinformation, broken trust (nbcnews.com)