This article was originally published on the Casper Star-Tribune on January 3, 2021.
Tourism is our second largest industry, which is why an efficient rollout of our state’s COVID vaccination program is critical not just from the standpoint of our health, but also for our economy. To meet that challenge, our state health experts might consider borrowing a lesson from Kelly Johnson of Lockheed Corporation who developed the KISS concept: Keep it Simple Stupid.
Kelly Johnson was the engineer who led Lockheed’s Advanced Development Program in the 1950s and 60s, and was responsible for achievements such as the U-2 spy plane. While a remarkable engineer, Johnson is best known for inventing the acronym KISS, and the importance of simplicity in design when facing complex projects. Today the KISS concept is used in processes as varied as animation at Disney, a core leadership principle at Amazon, and employed to manage U.S. Navy operations.
Roughly 400,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccine will eventually need to be distributed across Wyoming, a state hard to get around and sparsely populated. All of which understates the challenge when you consider that tourism is centered around low-density, hard to access, areas where people hunt, camp, fish, or just come to stare at a moose.
The speed at which we vaccinate our state matters because in last year 9.2 million tourists spent nearly $4 billion with Wyoming businesses on hamburgers, nights in hotels, gasoline, and sunscreen, creating an estimated 32,500 full and part-time jobs. Soon, families across the country will be deciding between visiting Arizona’s Grand Canyon this summer, or Wyoming’s Yellowstone National Park. In making their decision, one of the questions they’ll ask is, “How safe is Wyoming?”
The Centers for Disease Control currently provides guidelines for distributing the vaccination, and Phase 1a prioritizes those most exposed to the virus (such as health care workers), and seniors living in long term care facilities—populations relatively straightforward to identify and reach.
But after that, the CDC’s guidelines get complicated and opaque, violating the KISS principle. Phase 1b in the CDC guidelines prioritizes “essential workers” which include “manufacturing workers” and those in the “educational sector.” Under these guidelines, health care workers will need to decide if “manufacturing” includes someone who forges oil and gas drill pipe, or whether a part-time worker who sells hot dogs at a University of Wyoming basketball game is covered under the CDC’s intent as someone working in the “educational sector.”
The phase that follows includes people with conditions that increase the risk of life-threatening complications from contracting COIVD. A few years back I was diagnosed with lung cancer and had a portion of my right lung removed. The cancer and procedure were rare enough that no one knows if I am at greater risk if I were infected with COVID. Left with the current CDC recommendations, Wyoming doctors will need to make thousands of individual clinical determinations on the severity of underlying health conditions like mine, which will require administrative layers, take time, and cause confusion among patients and healthcare workers.
While these questions might seem like details to be sorted out later, they are exactly the type of complication that Johnson understood cause systems to break down, take longer, and cost more money—situations that benefit from KISS. Fortunately, the CDC allows states flexibility to meet their individual state requirements. Which means Wyoming’s Department of Health can modify their procedures for addressing this complex logistical challenge if they so choose.
If COVID vaccinations were a stealth bomber, Kelly Johnson might suggest we vaccinate based on a simple criterion such as what is on our driver’s license. For example, vaccinate those over the age of 65, and then maybe jump to those of school age who are more likely to spread COVID. Johnson would presumably point out that if the criteria are simple, every doctor and drug store pharmacist can focus on vaccinating as many Wyomingites as quickly as possible. As a guy with a potentially dangerous underlying health condition, I prefer to take my chances with a fast and efficient process that accelerates the whole state toward “herd immunity” rather than a procedure that may be well-intended, but nonetheless confusing, cumbersome, and slow.
As Lockheed discovered, you can’t get a plane in the air or vaccinate 400,000 Wyomingites in the fastest way possible if the quest for perfection leads to an overly complex system. KISS is not only good for our health, but also for our economy. Time is of the essence. Soon families outside of our state will be deciding whether to float Wyoming’s Green River or Idaho’s Salmon River. It would be nice if the Wyoming Office of Tourism could tell them, “Wyoming is the safest state in the country.”