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June 29, 2014 - Interesting spin-off of my "Big Idea" at the Aspen Ideas Festival. My

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Date
2014-06-29 00:00 (day precision)
Type
diary entry · diary
author
Anthony S. Fauci
June 29, 2014 - Interesting spin-off of my "Big Idea" at the Aspen Ideas Festival. My idea was that we can end the AIDS pandemic in 10 years (by 2024 - theme of festival - global health by 2024 and we were asked what single thing (big idea) do we think would greatly influence global health by 2024). Gov. Andrew Cuomo has stated that he wants to end the AIDS pandemic in NY State in 6 to 10 years. The NY Times wrote this up in the Sunday Times and quoted me since the reporter had heard about my Big Idea from the Aspen Festival. The article had me praising Gov. Cuomo and my saying that NY could be a model for the rest of the country.

In context

A single line often inverts meaning once you see what it answers, so neighbouring messages are always shown.

  1. 2014-06-09 00:00 Anthony S. Fauci open
    June 9, 2014 - Partook in CSIS conference on TB at their headquarters at 1616 Rhode Island Avenue, N.W. Good symposium. Shared panel with my dear friend Eric Goosby
  2. 2014-06-12 00:00 Anthony S. Fauci open
    June 12, 2014 - Went to San Francisco to give Grand Rounds at Moffett (invited by Marcia Glass (Kat Glass's sister). Timed the trip to coincide with Ali's graduation from Stanford on June 13-15. Great time; extremely well-received by UCSF community. Visited with Eric Goosby, Jaime Sepulveda and others from UCSF; spent time with students and fellows. Chris and Megan flew to SF with me - I went north to UCSF and they went south to Palo Alto. That evening met in SF for dinner. Great time. Drove back to Palo Alto that night
  3. 2014-06-13 00:00 Anthony S. Fauci open
    June 13-15, 2014 - Magnificent time at Stanford graduation events. Ali received multiple academic honors in addition to sports honors. Graduated "with distinction" , which means summa cum laude. Also, received Engineering Award and inducted into School of Engineering Honor Society. iscuss the situation. Socially, had great time. Dinner at NOLA sponsored by Chris and me and the parents of several of the seniors on Ali's boat - Ad Bax, Dawson's, etc.. Present at dinner were all the seniors on the boat - Anna Dawson (Olympian), Daphne Martschenko (AllAmerican), Kayla Cornale, Christina Bax, etc. Wonderful, joyous meal. On Thursday night Chris, Jenny, Megan, Ali and I drove to Half Moon Bay and had dinner at Miramar Restaurant by the sea - open pit fireplace and dining by the beach - great wine, calamari, etc. Seems not to get any better than this - so wonderfully proud of Ali who is truly a superstar - self-effacing, but a real superstar. Has another great lunch with the Ayers on Sunday afternoon before I took the "red-eye" back to DC. The formal graduation on Sunday had Bill and Melinda Gates as co-commencement speakers. They were good , but a bit self-congratulatory. I viewed the famous Stanford "Wacky Walk" entrance of the seniors. Ali and friends were dressed as "cars". Really fun.
  4. 2014-06-24 00:00 Anthony S. Fauci open
    June 24-25, 2014 - Went to Aspen Ideas Festival. Gave 2 minute "Big Idea "during Opening Ceremony and was on panel on Emerging IDs with Tom Frieden and Yu Wang of China CDC. Moderated by Rich Besser (ABC News). Good panel. Many compliments for this and Big Idea. Met the usual DC glitterati at the festival - Walter Isaacson, Barbara Bush, Bill Frist, Corby Kumar, etc.
  5. 2014-06-29 00:00 Anthony S. Fauci
    June 29, 2014 - Interesting spin-off of my "Big Idea" at the Aspen Ideas Festival. My idea was that we can end the AIDS pandemic in 10 years (by 2024 - theme of festival - global health by 2024 and we were asked what single thing (big idea) do we think would greatly influence global health by 2024). Gov. Andrew Cuomo has stated that he wants to end the AIDS pandemic in NY State in 6 to 10 years. The NY Times wrote this up in the Sunday Times and quoted me since the reporter had heard about my Big Idea from the Aspen Festival. The article had me praising Gov. Cuomo and my saying that NY could be a model for the rest of the country.
  6. 2014-07-03 00:00 Anthony S. Fauci open
    July 3, 2014 - The Ebola outbreak in Guinea, Sierra-Leone and Liberia is getting out of control. Latest number are 759 cases and 476 deaths (63% fatality) making this the largest outbreak of Ebola on record. Net highest was in 2000 in Uganda with ~400 cases. Major concern since it is now spreading in the cities of these countries and the population is not cooperating in containing it by ignoring the recommendations about how to handle patients and dead bodies. Also, major ignorance causing population to attack and stone doctors and nurses from Doctors without Borders and WHO, saying that there is a conspiracy on the part of the government to deplete the population. I appeared on CNN today to discuss the situation.
  7. 2014-07-04 00:00 Anthony S. Fauci open
    July 4-8, 2014 - Interesting 4th of July weekend. Found out from Deb Persaud and Hannah Gay that the "Mississippi baby" rebounded at 27 months following D/Cing of ART. Baby is 46 months old. Unfortunately, so much for the "cure" baby. We are sequencing the virus now to determine if this is not a "new" infection, i.e. abuse from an HIV-infected person. More on this later. Also, heard (and spent many hours on conference calls) that an FDA employee who was cleaning out a cold room in Building 29A (FDA building on NIH campus) found a cardboard box that contained 6 glass undisturbed vials labelled "variola". Likely there unnoticed since the 1950s. CDC and FBI notified. Good news is that leaks did not occur and within a couple of days, the CDC came up to NIH, area secured by FBI, and material flown down to CDC on FBI plane. Examined there by Select Agent people and PCR'd to confirm smallpox. Will determine if viable within 1 week and will be destroyed as witnessed by WHO. Technically, the presence of this material in Building 29A was a violation of an international agreement to destroy all smallpox samples except for 2 aliquots kept at CDC and at VICTOR in Russia.
  8. 2014-07-09 00:00 Anthony S. Fauci open
    July 9, 2014 - PCR confirms that the Mississippi Baby has indeed rebounded with virus at 16,000 and 10,000 copies RNA per ml. Baby has been off cART for 27 months and is 46 months of age. Disappointing, but raises many questions. The baby had no detectable immune response for these many months. Since the virus was obviously there in a reservoir somewhere, what then was the mechanisms that was preventing it from rebounding. Will hold press conference with Deb Persaud, Hannah Gay, and Katherine Luzuriaga on Thursday (tomorrow). Had interesting rounds today to see our first patient (Phil Diers) that received an allogeneic PBMC transfer from a HLA-B27 HIV-infected Elite Controller donor. Recipient has CD4+ T cell count of 0-4 and >150,000 copies of HIV on cART (resistant virus). Hope is that the immune response of donor cells will impact in some way the infected cells of the recipient. More to come. Way out chance of a graft versus infected cell effect that might eliminate reservoir (too much to ask for). See picture below of me on Rounds the day after the allogeneic transfer.
  9. 2014-07-10 00:00 Anthony S. Fauci open
    July 10, 2014 - Press briefing with Deb, Hannah and Katherine today (Thursday - thunderstorms). Followed by major press that appeared tonight and tomorrow (July 11) with my quoted or appearing on TV or radio tonight or tomorrow: AP TV that subcontracted to BBC TV seen in Italy by Bruce Gellin (sent me e-mail); CBS Evening News

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