Thread by @NamanSr

I will tell you a corona story, as told by a doctor and confirmed by a lab owner. I am living this right now.

See if there is a product management lesson here.

Corona cases are being recorded by all authorities world over. From Municipal level adding up to Country level.

So you know exactly which municipal commissioner / collector / CM / PM is responsible for how many cases.

Media has made it a headline and a competing metric.

You can be strict with the lockdown and hope metrics will reduce as the diseases will be contained.
Or
You can control the metrics.
Local authorities have give a quota to each lab, as to how many positives they can declare everyday.

The reports are boolean so they get to decide what severity level to declare as positive.

Less severe cases declared as negative.
If you really have to declare positive, but ran out of daily quota, overflow to next day and say "your report is delayed, will come tomorrow"

Doctors are advised to treat like it is corona if they see symptoms, irrespective of test report.
There is no definite medicine so the patient and everyone around him are on same medication.

Nothing wrong till now. Win win for everyone.

The patients health deteriorates. There is anxiety in family. They want to move the patient from home care/isolation to a hospital.

Corona hospital are not for u because ur report is negative.
Specialised hospitals wont take u cause they dont know what it is & u have symptoms

Family spends further time / money / energy and "connections" to secure a bed in hospital.
They buy oxygen cylinder and all costly injections as back up.
Family with no connection run around hospital to hospital to secure a bed for non-corona patient.

The anxiety increases and in some cases the health deteriorates further and being fatal (not in my case, thankfully).

Leading to more deaths, that could have been avoided. And more money spent for no reason.
Even if the patient now dies, they were not corona positive so the tally does not increase.

So you failed in the real meaningful metrics but still won in the metrics being tracked.

In product management, everything bad starts with tracking a meaningless metrics.
You might be able to save the metrics but the intent of the product still fails.

Sometime there are multiple metrics but a lesser metrics is made the hero metrics. Because it is the easiest to track (first order) or sometime its just bigger in number than rest of the metrics, so it catches the eye.

A product's core metrics is rarely first order. It is almost always second order. A number relative to another.
Conversion rate. CTR. Etc.
Or in this case it could have been recovery rate or something else.

Wrote about this 2yrs ago. namansr.com/2nd-order-prod…

Keep safe. Take care of your family.