What you’re not going to learn from CDC website
Last night we learned that a California patient is the first person in the US to come down with the coronavirus where the origin is unknown. It’s what public health officials call “community spread.” This important news hasn’t made it to the CDC website yet. But CNN and other news outlets reported it liberally last night. I heard it from Chris Hayes. Dr. Sanjay Gupta had a good, clear explanation as well.
As you may know, I study how people understand or misunderstand health and science information.
It’s so important for the general public to understand basic public health concepts, especially at a time such as this, when hyperbole, pervasive social media warnings and misinformation can contaminate our thinking and our actions.
We have high profile candidates like Amy Klobuchar in the Democratic Debate on Tuesday advising the public to learn about Coronavirus from the CDC website.
Amy are you sure you want to advise that?
Are you sure good, up-to-date, understandable information lives there?
In this post I use the CDC’s failure to explain “community spread” as one of many examples of how the CDC could and must do a waaaaay better job communicating with the public and helping people to understand things such as infection and pandemic.
Last week I simply asked friends what community spread means. Most didn’t know and many said it means that “the virus is just hitting certain few communities.”
And for the correct information – well it is hiding in plain deep in the catacombs of CDC information. In this case information about community spread is in the transcript of a CDC representative speaking to the media on a telebriefing call yesterday, Feb 14 2020! .
It was posted all in caps ( much harder to read).
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…WE’RE CONTINUING TO HOPE THAT WE WON’T SEE COMMUNITIES SPREAD AND CERTAINLY HOPING THAT OUR MEASURES GIVE US EXTRA TIME TO PREPARE BY GAINING OURSELVES THIS TIME, THE HOPE IS THAT WE’LL HAVE MORE TIME TO PREPARE.
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….MITIGATION, IS WHEN YOU STOP TRYING TO TRACE CLOSE CONTACTS AROUND EVERY CASE TO CONTAIN THE CASE, AND INSTEAD TO FOCUS ON — FOCUS ON THE DISRUPTION AND THE COMMUNITY TRYING TO DECREASE THE BURDEN, TRYING TO DECREASE THE MORBIDITY AND MORTALITY. DOING EVERYTHING TO HELP AT A SOCIETAL LEVEL. THE KIND OF THINGS THAT WE’RE TALKING ABOUT ARE COMMUNITY LED LEVEL DECISIONS. FOR EXAMPLE, IN GENERAL, SOCIAL DISTANCING, SCHOOL CLOSURES, CANCELING MASS GATHERINGS, SORT OF NONPHARMACEUTICAL INTERVENTIONS WE’RE TALKING ABOUT THINGS LIKE TELEMEDICINE, TELESCHOOLING, TELEWORKING SO THAT AT A SOCIETAL LEVEL WE TRY TO DISRUPT THE SPREAD. IN A SITUATION LIKE THIS WHERE WE DON’T HAVE A VACCINE AND WE DON’T YET HAVE A SPECIFIC COUNTERMEASURE, THOSE KIND OF NONPHARMACEUTICAL INTERVENTIONS AT A COMMUNITY LEVEL ARE REALLY IMPORTANT. THAT’S WHY IN THIS TIME THAT WE HAVE GAINED OURSELF IS WORKING CLOSELY ACROSS ALL OF GOVERNMENT AND WITH OUR LOCAL AND STATE PARTNERS ON PLANNING FOR THOSE OPERATIONS. FORTUNATELY IN THE UNITED STATES BECAUSE WE HAVE DONE A LOT OF PLANNING AROUND PANDEMIC INFLUENZA WE HAVE A GOOD HEAD START, BUT WE NEED TO LOOK AT THE PLANS, SEE HOW THE CURRENT SITUATION MIGHT ALTER THEM AND YOU’LL SEE A LOT OF THE GUIDANCE COMING UP ON THE WEBSITE IN THE COMING WEEKS. NEXT QUESTION.
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A clear explanation of why community spread is important is still not posted anywhere I can find on the CDC website
I ask again, why hasn’t this been posted on the CDC website so that people can become more informed about this pandemic event and to advance their health literacy about how much can and will be done to protect communities if the time arises?
