A single line often inverts meaning once you see what it
answers, so neighbouring messages are always shown.
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March 31, 2015 - continues to improve with increased strength. Need to figure out way to get him back to Dallas where his parents live. He lives in Houston. Technically, since he is now PCR negative X2, he can fly commercial; however, the optics will be bad - people get hysterical if they find out he is an ex-Ebola patient. And so wrote to Paul Farmer to see if PIH will pay for a charter for him to fly from DC to Dallas. Cliff and I went down to State Department to meet with US Ambassador to Guinea - Alexander Mark Laskaris to get his help in smoothing the way for us to do the RCT for the Ebola vaccine in Guinea since Guinea is where the infections are and the Norwegians and WHO clearly do not want us to do the trial there (see above). Laskaris totally gets that WHO are the "bad" guys and have lost all credibilityand he will support us. Chris and I took out Denise and jack to Fiola Mare restaurant in Georgetown for jack's 80th birthday. Below is final communication between Harold Varmus in his last official day as NCI Director and me. He has been a dear friend as NIH Director and over the past 5 years as NCI Director:
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April 1, 2015 - continues marked improvement. Sitting up in cardiac chair; off full PPE and now on contact isolation only. He walked with help from the hot zone room to the contact isolation room. even played an April Fool's joke on Rick Davey by feigning severe illness when Rick came in the room. claimed that he did not know who Rick was or who Nurse Megan was. Parents delighted. Tom Burton of Wall Street Journal is digging into the story about the conduct of Welcome trust, WHO and Chimerix (brincidofavir). He is a smart reporter and is catching on to the scandalous conduct of these parties.
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April 2, 2015 - Gave Q and A-type lecture on 7th floor of Humphrey Building hosted by Bill Schultz the General Counsel of HHS. Big crowd of all the OGC people from the department. I told the story (via questions from Bill) about my dealings with multiple administrations. After the session 12:30 PM to 1:30 PM, Sylvia Burwell had asked to see me in her office. She had just come back from the White House. She profusely thanked me and the NIH team for all we are doing with and with the vaccine trials. Apparently Tom Frieden had told her that he did not want to CDC to "move into Guinea" because of the instability. A bit puzzling since the CDC is already there. We still plan to extend the RCT vaccine trial to Guinea. review from the NY Times up and walking. Unfortunately, despite 3 negative CT's for blood, he reverted (after one negative) to positive in his left axilla sweat/skin.
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April 3, 2015 - doing great. Dilemma is the persistently weakly + PCR of axillary sweat. Has resting tachycardia that might be subclinical cardiomyopathy. Has been seen in other recovered patients in the USA (Emory/Nebraska). Gregg Gonsalves (old ACT-UP and TAG) who is now a Ph.D. student at Yale has brought to NIH (7A-24) a few (three) Yale students to interview me on a piece that they are writing on the issues with unnecessary quarantine of people working with Ebola. They are interviewing me because of the stand that I took in opposition of Gov. Cuomo and Christie a few months ago.
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2015-04-05 00:00
Anthony S. Fauci
April 5, 2015 (Easter Sunday) - CBS ran their Sunday AM special profile of me in a Q and A with Scott Simon (NPR). It turned out magnificently. I received scores and scores of e-mails of congratulations, many-fold more than even when I did 2 "Full Ginsberg's" a few months ago. E-mails from as diverse people as Gary Edson, Josh Bolton, Lisa Monaco (NSC), Catherine and Wayne Reynolds, old friends from NY Hospital, etc., etc. Will have to make decision about doing a single PCR on axilla and if negative, then stop testing rather than looking for 2 consecutive negatives. This is unchartered waters, since he has already had multiple negative blood PCRs.
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April 6, 2015 - Axillary sweat PCR now negative. We will take him out of isolation tomorrow and have upgraded his condition from "fair" to "good". Plan to do MRI of heart (still has sinus tachycardia at rest) and brain and then discharge him sometime this week.
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April 7, 2015 - now out of isolation due to negative blood and axillary sweat. semen specimen shows high level of PCR signal - 18 CT! Clearly the semen is a privileged site for the virus since his blood has been consistently negative. Preparations for extending the RCT vaccine trial to Guinea coming along. Cliff doing yeoman's work with the French (Yves Levy - INSERM and Jean Francois Delfraissy). French are intent on showing that they are taking the lead in this. This relates to their traditional relationship with Guinea. Will go to White House tomorrow to discuss with the POTUS and NSC "getting to zero in Guinea".
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April 8, 2015 - Larry Kramer's new book is out. See review from the NY Times below and see yellow highlight:
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April 8, 2015 (Cont'd) -- Cold, damp and drizzly day in DC. Unseasonably cold (40s) for mid-April. Went to White House Situation room for meeting at 1:50 to 2:50 PM with the POTUS and the NSC. Purpose of meeting to discuss "getting to zero cases of Ebola in Guinea". Present at the meeting among many were Eric Holder, Gen. Martin Dempsey, Denis McDonough, Valerie Jarrett, Susan Rice, Samatha Powers (by teleconference), Tom Frieden (by teleconference), Amy Pope (new Ebola Response Coordinator, replacing Ron Klain), Gayle Smith, Lisa Monaco, etc. I presented the recent information on the RCT for ZMapp. We have enrolled 5 patients: |Gorman in the USA, I in Liberia and 3 in Sierra Leone. I also updated on the Phase 2 RCT vaccine trial in Liberia. As indicated above, we are planning to move the trial to Guinea in collaboration with the French, the Guineans, and the Liberians. Tom Frieden is very anxious about this since he feels that it could go badly (suspicion on the part of Guineans that we are hurting them). He called me up before the WH meeting strongly urging me not to pre-emptively bring up the possibility of expanding the trial to Guinea. I agreed not to pre-emptively bring it up; however, if the subject does come up, I will say that we are considering this. Nervous Tom was OK with this. The POTUS looked very tired during the meeting and Tom, in his presentation, went on and on until the POTUS said: "OK, I get it". Will discharge HE tomorow. Eye exam shows some uveitis and MRI of heart shows some residual cardiac dysfunction and MRI of CNS shows evidence of prior meningoencephalitis. Looked at MRI of brain tonight with Avi Nath. There are considerable abnormalities in the white matter and in the corpus callosum. Considerably worse than what his neurological status would indicate. Went over to see tonight. He is getting ready to go out to dinner in Bethesda with his parents. Took a bunch of photos with us all together. Leave tomorrow for Dallas.