by MakeUsWell
America yearns for her pre-pandemic days. But our old normal wasn't so good. COVID-19 uncovered and amplified societal economic, racial, and mental health problems. Identity politics and endless (re) elections, investigations, recalls, and impeachments cycles made the fire worse.
COVID-19 is retreating but hasn't surrendered. We've likely entered a post-pandemic era with more frequent future pandemics. So far COVID-19 has caused ~560K direct deaths, trillions in economic damage, and mental anguish for ~90% of the people.
Vaccine Truths
MakeUsWell strongly believes in vaccines. The facts show:
- The anti-vaxxers are a strong, well funded force. They want to sell things, prevent herd immunity, and stop a peaceful equilibrium.
- Most government health officials—federal, state, and local—have failed to communicate and empower people to make an informed choice.
Risks
We assessed 100+ risks:
- 5,800 "Fully-Vaccinated" people got infected.
- Booster Shots needed. Vaccination is not a one-time event.
- Bad side effects. The European AstraZeneca fiasco and the domestic J&J suspension which emboldened anti-vaxxers.
- Vaccine immunity length? And how much incrementally better than from natural immunity?
- Non-Binary outcome. Vaccines can decrease your risk of catching, infecting others, hospitalization, ventilator, and death.
- No viable vaccine for American children.
These and many other risks vary by thousands of combinations of health and demographic variables. We need 12 or 18 months of post vaccination data, starting December, 2020. And many Americans want to see those cohorts before they take the jab.
The CDC failed to give use good, accurate, and timely data. Their systems are antiquated and sometimes totally broken and non-functioning.
The CDC needs to modernize their systems with new web technologies and the blockchain.
The CDC's incompetence has created a war, where so-called "experts"—who should be called amateurs—fight by spinning, or outright making up data to serve their overt and covert financial and status-seeking agendas.
MakeUsWell created a platform of dynamic scores and segmentations. Our framework's corresponding software and augmented analytics can be applied to consumers in the North American vaccination market.
Focused on:
- Ranks, scores, and predicts the likelihood of individuals and different segments to get any COVID-19 vaccine.
- Matches these people or segments with the right marketing messages and incentives to convert them. Consumers choose to get vaccinated as a result of segmentation, targeting, communications, and incentives.
We do this without increasing the mental anguish, lack of empathy, stress, anger, and vitriol that people are feeling or acting out towards others.
- Geography. ~41K+ zip and multiple neighbourhoods
- Race. Not simplistic. Black Americans are different depending on whether they grew up in Jamaica, Queens, or Montego Bay. Hispanic citizens can come from Cuba or Mexico or El Salvador. All American racial or ethnic micro segments have different attitudes and behaviours towards the COVID vaccines.
- Autonomy. We considered how independently people make decisions. And fears that hold them back—needles or criticism from anti-vaxxer friends
- Social. Because people spend a lot of time and have a lot of conversations on Twitter.
HOPE automates and infuses intelligence in how and what MakeUsWell communicates to the consumers and segments targeted and scored in GRAS. HOPE matches individuals in similar score ranges or segments to customized cadenced communications. HOPE generates copy for chats, emails, SMSs, and web pages.
- Hemingway: simple, straightforward answers to questions. "Do the drug companies have liability if things go wrong?" No, the government waived their liability. But if an employer nudges you to take a vaccine and it has a bad side effect, you can sue the employer.
- Orwellian: the CDC didn't "pause" the J&J. They canceled it. Lose the Orwellian speak. It likely won’t be in the market for a while. And even if it is, consumers will resist taking the J&J one shot. The “pause” has fatally damaged consumer credibility. We have multiple data sets where people are canceling appointments for the J&J vaccine.
- Paternalistic: the CDC needs to tell Americans the truth and the whole truth. We incorporated this into our communications tactics.
- Elide Partisanship: slide over and delete it in our work. Practically, you can't eliminate it.
Incentives
Florida and Texas governors signed almost identical orders banning vaccination passports. New York's governor introduced a vaccination passport with the Orwellian name of Excelsior. And the Excelsior suffers from numerous privacy, security, and usability issues.
Americans hate the ideas of vaccination passports. They need positive incentives. Like the ones that have been used in business—extra vacation. Or a $500 stimulus from the government for taking the vaccine.
Or something fun, like the Krispy Kreme data showed.