How the CDC Destroyed Itself (And What To Do About It)

Marketing savvy, political chaos, and raw philosophy collide here as Mookie Spitz—a bald, blunt veteran of advertising and PR—cuts through the confusion to expose how persuasion really works, and why institutions keep screwing it up.

In this episode, Mookie takes on the CDC, the vaccine wars, and the larger collapse of trust in American public health. He starts with a simple truth he learned in the trenches: you can’t make people do what they don’t want to do. That lesson applies just as much to selling sneakers as it does to selling science. Yet during the pandemic, government agencies tried exactly that: mandates, incomplete-truths, and data dumps delivered to a frightened, skeptical public. The result was predictable: backlash, paranoia, and a communication failure so severe it helped reshape politics, amplify conspiracy theories, and hand the microphone to anti-science voices like RFK Jr.

Mookie isn’t anti-vaccine, far from it. He’s emphatic: vaccines, aside from clean water, have saved more lives than any other medical advancement in history. But the way the government sold the COVID vaccine was a textbook disaster. By downplaying risks, dismissing fears, and burying adverse cases instead of acknowledging them, leaders alienated millions. In marketing, trust is brand identity. Lose that, and you lose your audience. That’s exactly what happened, and we’re still living in the wreckage.

His rant isn’t just about public health. Instead, he pulls the lens back to explore how bad communication drives bigger crises: crime stats that don’t match lived reality, authoritarian leaders exploiting ignored fears, and a science-illiterate public left to navigate mandates it never trusted. Along the way, Mookie brings in philosophy (Feyerabend’s Against Method, Burroughs’ virus-like bureaucracy), politics, and the hard lessons of PR. The takeaway: facts don’t change minds, empathy does. First hearts, then data. Always.

But the news isn't all bad, as he shares a few concrete recommendations: 

Know your audience

• Understand cultural fears, skepticism, and biases. Meet people where they are instead of lecturing from above.

Lead with emotion, not data

• Acknowledge fear and hesitancy first. Facts alone don’t change behavior—empathy does.

Validate lived experience

• Don’t dismiss people’s side effects, fears, or stories. If someone felt sick for two days after a shot, pretending it’s “nothing” destroys trust.

Be transparent about risks and uncertainty

• Admit vaccines can have rare side effects. Admit breakthrough infections happen. If you bury that information, you make it bigger.

Empower choice instead of forcing compliance

• Mandates backfire. People resent being told what to do. Frame decisions as personal agency, not top-down orders.

Communicate benefits as self-flattering

• Show how choosing vaccination (or any behavior) is a reflection of being smart, caring, strong, or community-minded.

Acknowledge the collective fear, not just the individual case

• Don’t just dismiss paranoia—address why people are scared, and connect to the broader reality.

Avoid overreliance on authority or orthodoxy

• Bureaucratic, top-down messaging feels manipulative. Speak like a trusted peer, not an institution.

Rebuild science literacy over the long term

• A deeper problem is the U.S. education system. Without basic science understanding, every communication battle will repeat itself.