A single line often inverts meaning once you see what it
answers, so neighbouring messages are always shown.
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September 19, 2014 - I continue to do small amount of press (as the press is getting some fatigue with the same story) with Swedish National TV interview as well as a FOX news appearance. Of note is the fact that the White House communications people are acting in a very bizarre way. During the past week I have been receiving requests for appearances on a variety of TV shows for the upcoming weekend including CNN and MSNBC on Saturday, September 20, as well as Face the Nation and Fox news on Sunday, September 21. The White House has refused to say yes or no to clearance and despite multiple requests on the part of our communications people, namely, Courtney Billet and Patty Conrad, we have not received a positive or negative reply for clearance. This has gone on into the late evening of Friday, September 19 despite the fact that the programmers were waiting for me to be on shows on Saturday. This is an absolute unacceptable disgrace. The White House because of their inability to decide what should go out on the weekends and their extraordinary and unexplainable need to control all messages is putting all of us in the embarrassing position of being unresponsive to legitimate media requests to discuss things that are not in conflict with anything else the administration is doing. This is unequivocally the worst administration I have ever dealt with when it comes to the need to control the media. This evening I had a very intense and somewhat poignant conversation with Tom Frieden at 9 PM to 10 PM concerning how we are going to approach the issue of vaccines. Tom still has considerable concern about a truly randomized controlled trial to determine the efficacy of the vaccine when the control is not one of the vaccines themselves. He continues to struggle with the fact that we are not going to be able to get efficacy data unless we do have a control arm which conflicts with the emotional need to get vaccine to everyone as soon as possible. The difficulty here is that we might in fact truly need an effective vaccine if the epidemic continues to expand and reaches the CDC projected model of 500,000 cases within the next several months. Under those circumstances we will absolutely need an effective vaccine and if we do not know if it is effective it will be very difficult to widely distribute it. This is a painful dilemma that hopefully we can work out. hether I have been discussing this by e-mail with Paul Farmer who is currently in Monrovia, Liberia. Paul is very sensitive to the fact that we need to do research to determine the efficacy of the vaccine and feels that we can pull this off in Liberia with a properly run trial. In this regard, the Minister of Health of Liberia has actually requested collaboration with the NIH in doing research on therapeutics and vaccines. It is going to be a difficult struggle to reconcile the emotional need of many people (in some respects including Tom Frieden) to distribute vaccine at the same time that we are not sure if it actually works or even paradoxically causes harm. I will continue to pursue discussions of clinical trial designs that might be able to get us where we need to be, i.e. proving efficacy at the same time as making vaccine available as quickly as possible.
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Sept. 20, 2014 - Went to reception tonight at the home of Hilary Rosen (Democratic pundit) at 4835 Hutchins Place, N.W. to welcome Megan Smith former VP at Google as the White House Chief Technology Officer. All the usual Washington glitterati were their (some examples: Judy Woodruff, Al Hunt, Andrea Mitchell, Bob Barnett, Tammy Haddad, Hunter and Kathleen Biden, etc. Megan is very impressive (MIT grad; Google exec) and we discussed the potential use of technology to address the Ebola epidemic - cell phone distribution, GPS tracking devices. Hopefully, she can help. Indeed, neither a yes or no from the WH and HHS regarding the requests for my appearances on TV over the weekend and so I did not appear. Instead, Face the Nation had Richard Schaffner from Vanderbilt and MNNBC had Laurie Garrett. This administration are a bunch of idiots.
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Sept. 21, 2014 - Had call at home from Leslie Dach wanting my opinion about a "dispute' between USAID and Tom Frieden about home care versus community based care of people with Ebola or suspected of Ebola in situations where the ETUs are full. I backed Tom who feels that doing it at home would be counter-productive. Leslie now relying on me as "the adult in the room" according to Peggy Hamburg.
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Sept. 22, 2014 - Tait Sye from HHS not giving me clearance to appear on CNN-Wolf Blitzer because "CDC will be putting out an MMWR today". What morons!! I just cannot believe this administration. I must write about this in my book. They so inappropriately try to control "messages" that they are laughable. POTUS decides to bomb ISIS in Syria. Ebola numbers expanding. Had another night time call with Tom Frieden trying to iron out the RCT issue. Also, Tom is very frustrated with Nicki Lurie, saying that having her around and involved in conversations is always counter-productive. Also, he is frustrated with Sec. Burwell, feeling that she seems only to want to "check the boxes" instead of getting involved in important decisions.
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2014-09-23 00:00
Anthony S. Fauci
Sept. 23, 2014 - Still working with Tom Frieden in trying to get agreement on whether to conduct an RCT of the vaccine. Tom remains concerned about a true control (placebo) arm and wants to do a Stepped-Wedge trial of sequentially vaccinated different cohorts without the simultaneous double blind control group. This evening went to the Annual Friends of cancer Research Awards Ceremony on the roof of the Hay-Adams Hotel. Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts and Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana received awards. Had good conversation with Gov. Patrick.
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Sept. 24, 2014 - On the last Secretary's call, Burwell tasked me to get the HHS team together and fashion out a consensus about the way forward following ending of phase 1 vaccine trial at NIH. I had long conversation with Tom Frieden this AM and he is starting to come around. Seems he will be OK with an RCT simultaneously done with a Stepped-Wedge Trial. I arranged a conference call at 5:30 PM with me, Tom, Nicki Lurie, Peggy Hamburg, Lu Borio, and Anne Schuchat. We came to agreement that we will do the two trials (RCT + Stepped Wedge) simultaneously. CDC (Anne and Tom) feel that the RCT may be so difficult to implement that the Stepped-Wedge approach might give us some information, while the RCT could fail. Cliff and I feel just the opposite. However, in order to get things moving, we came to a compromise. I will report this to the HHS Secretary's call tomorrow. Continue to have press interest: Bloomberg News TV; WTOP Radio; pre-show interview with CBS 60 Minutes for future show.
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Sept. 25, 2014 - Did MSNBC this AM as a commentary immediately following the POTUS statement before the UN on Ebola. He gave his speech and then I was asked to comment. Of course, I supported what he said (since he said the right things - all nations must pitch in).
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Sept. 26, 2014 - Learned at 4:00 PM this afternoon that the NIH Clinical Center will be accepting for observation in our special studies unit an American physician who had a moderate risk exposure to Ebola in Sierra Leone (clean needle puncture through a contaminated glove). We scrambled around over the evening preparing press statements and plans. Patient will arrive on Sunday, Sept. 28.
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Sept. 27, 2014 - Did FOX News and CNN today (Saturday) on regular Ebola issues. Also, much press coming in since the press release went out today on the patient arriving from Sierra Leone. In this regard, I did CBS Radio News; NPR background; WUSA - Channel 9 TV; various print outlets. Likely much more tomorrow.