A single line often inverts meaning once you see what it
answers, so neighbouring messages are always shown.
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December 7, 2012 - went to dinner at the home of Connie Milstein on 3210 - R Street, N.W. in Georgetown. Connie is the owner of the Jefferson Hotel in Washington DC. The occasion of the event was a fund raiser for the organization called Key to the Cure 2012. This is an organization aimed at curing epilepsy. It is run by Susan and David Axelrod who have a child with epilepsy. It was an extraordinary evening with all the glitterati of Washington DC at the meeting including a visit from VP Joe Biden. I had the opportunity to chat a bit with the vice president and discuss our work with HIV-AIDS. He clearly knew who I was since I have met him several times when he was in the Senate and he was present at the East Room ceremony when I received the presidential Medal of Freedom. In addition there were number of other known media and political stars including Alex Castellanos, the Republican Strategist. The joke of the evening is that David Axelrod had just shaved off his mustache to raise money for the CURE. He had been joking on TV Sunday Talk Shows that he would shave off his mustache is Obama lost the election. Obviously, Obama won, but now David shaved it off for a cause. Alex Castellanos now promised to shave off his moustache to raise money for the CURE.
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December 8, 2012 - Saturday morning spent an hour on C-SPAN television (National Journal) in Washington DC (400 North Capitol Street) discussing seasonal flu and other infectious disease issues. I was on the show with my friend Tom Frieden, Director of the CDC.
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December 11, 2012 - engaged in a National Academy of Sciences Symposium in Washington DC at the Keck Building on 5th St., NW to discuss emerging infectious diseases and the 20th anniversary of the 1992 IOM report on emerging infectious diseases. Later in the day I gave a talk at the treatment action group (TAG) event run by Mark Harrington at the Fairfax Embassy Row Hotel on Massachusetts Avenue in DC. The subject of the meeting was ending the HIV pandemic in the United States. This meeting was put together in order to emphasize that we have a significant problem in the United States even at the same time as we are making enormous progress globally with having the end of the AIDS pandemic globally in sight, which was the topic of the Internal AIDS meeting in DC in July (see above) and the recent World AIDS Day events at the White House and the State Department.
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December 13, 2012 - travel to New York City to give the keynote lecture at the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DND1) symposium run by Medicins Sans Frontiere (MSF, aka Doctors Without Borders) entitled "Lives in the Balance: Delivering Medical Innovations for Neglected Patients and Populations" I spoke on the research issues related to neglected infectious diseases. My talk was very well received it took place at Mount Sinai Hospital on Madison Avenue and 99th St. The evening before I had dinner with my daughter Jennifer at Café Vida on Amsterdam Avenue and 97th Street. That evening when I got home I discussed the newly formed Office of Global Health Diplomacy with Eric Goosby. He wanted to give me a heads-up about the fact that Secretary Clinton would make an announcement the following day about the formation of this new office and that she would appoint Eric Goosby as the director of the new office while simultaneously maintaining his position as the director of PEPFAR. In typical manner, Eric is such a good person and friend that he wanted to keep me in the loop.
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2012-12-14 00:00
Anthony S. Fauci
December 14, 2012 - attended Lessons and Carols at the National Cathedral in Washington DC at 7:00 to 9:00 PM. This is a tradition which our family has done for all the years that are children attended the National Cathedral School. It was lovely and nostalgic. Megan and Ali attended with Chris and me. Jenny was still in NYC and would come down for Christmas in a few days.
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December 15, 2012 - had dinner with Wayne and Catherine Reynolds at the Adour Restaurant at the St. Regis Hotel on Connecticut Avenue in Washington DC. As usual Wayne and Catherine put together a very interesting group for dinner. This time it included my friend Rick Atkinson the Pulitzer Prize winning author as well as Buzzy Krongaard and his flakey wife Cheryl. Buzzie was formally the Executive Director of the CIA. We were joking about the smash TV Showtime hit series called "Homeland" starring Claire Danes as Carrie Mathieson (a bipolar CIA agent tracking terrorists) and Damien Lewis as Sarg. Nicholas Brody (a marine turned reluctant terrorist, turned back to good). Buzzie was saying that the CIA could never act domestically the way it was portrayed in the series. That would have to be FBI. Other guests included Francis Collins, Congressman John Dingell and his wife Debbie and others.
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December 17, 2012 - We had an "international consultation" on the problem of gain of function research on H5N1 highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) (see above discussions). The meeting took over two days from December 17 to December 18 and was conducted at the Natcher Auditorium at the National Institutes of Health. This is a continuing issue and a source of great discussion about what experiments should or should not be funded by the National Institutes of Health on this topic. I gave the opening keynote which everyone felt very clearly defined the issues. We will now finalize the draft of "Framework" for addressing the issue of what grants and contracts we should or should not fund that relate to a gain of function regarding respiratory transmissibility in mammals of the HPAI H5N1 influenza. I am trying to get myself out of this argument which has consumed a considerable amount of my time over the past 14 months.
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Dec. 30, 2012 - Interesting and potentially bad news regarding Sec. Hillary Clinton. A couple of weeks ago she reportedly fell and had a "concussion" that kept her out of the public eye for ~ 3 weeks. Report today that she was admitted to NY Presbyterian lso, Hospital for a "clot" and is supposed to be receiving anticoagulation. Her staff are being very close-to-the-vest about his. Cannot figure out if she just has thrombophlebitis or if she had a pulmonary embolus. Certainly could not have had a subdural hematoma since one would never anticoagulant under these circumstances. Turned out she had a venous thrombosis of a skull vein, not involving the brain
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Jan. 3, 2013 - A lot of influenza activity exploding throughout the country with H3N2 that matches the vaccine. Early start and big spike with widespread activity throughout the country. Appeared on Fox Local News this evening.