COVID-19 Records

August 10, 2021 - Global USA

Tony's Diary Package, pp.841-843 · fauci_diary:entry:00659

Page text: p.841, p.842, p.843 · original PDF

Date
2021-08-10 00:00 (day precision)
Type
diary entry · diary
author
Anthony S. Fauci
Topics
VaccinesMedia strategy and public messaging
August 10, 2021 - Global USA The soaring of cases continue. It is really looking rather ominous in that there have been numerous reports of gatherings of completely vaccinated people in a moderate to small sized party 20 thirty 40 people where you have outbreak of infections among these individuals. It is very clear that this virus is very different in its ability to transmit compared to the alpha variant. There have been a number of discussions regarding the use of additional booster shots. I have been a strong proponent and have led the discussion in getting additional booster doses to the people who are immunosuppressed, and to get these doses to them imminently. We have had she several meetings with Jeff and the team and in some cases with the FDA to try and expedite this. It becomes an issue of the clinical data in a somewhat preliminary form balanced against the need of the FDA to have firm data before they modify the EUA. The tension between Jeff and the CDC continues in that the culture does not allow the CDC to share data in real time in a situation in which you actually need data in real time to make a decision. The lack of confidence in Rochelle and the rest of the CDC is manifested by the fact that Jeff is having me as opposed to Rochelle brief the President about things that appear to be strictly epidemiological. The same holds true for briefings of the principles and the governors. I don't know what to do to help Rochelle change the culture of the CDC because this is a decades-long problem. Vivek is in total agreement with me on this issue. I met with the President today in the state dining room of the White House to discuss together with the administrator of FEMA Deanne Criswell and Assistant to the POTUS for Homeland Security Liz Sherwood-Randall among others and together with Natalie and Jeff. The topic of the discussion was how we were going to handle the obvious heavy hurricane season that is approaching in the context of major outbreaks of COVID in the gulf states that have the lowest levels of vaccination and the highest levels of infection. I presented the epidemiology data and Liz and Deanne presented the hurricane data. My impression was that the president was not particularly happy with Deanne's presentations since she was not able to give him the answer to a lot of his questions. Nonetheless being the gentleman that he is he did not really act annoyed with her although as I get to know his body language better I could sense that he was disappointed. As indicated above David Kessler and I and most recently with the support of Jeff have been trying to push the concept of getting the US government to make a major investment in Lonza company that makes the mRNA four Moderna. We're making some progress in the implementation of the concept of the US government bankrolling Lonza to expand this capability to supply billions of doses of vaccine to the developing world. We had been working on this in collaboration with Peter Staley, James Krellenstein, and David Barr. Unfortunately, Peter in his enthusiasm to get things done quickly, orchestrated a letter signed by 175 public health advocates essentially criticizing the Biden administration for acting too slowly in getting vaccine to the developing world. They sent the letter to the president simultaneously with sending it to the Washington Post and my media friends Yasmeen Abutaleb and Dan Diamond wrote an article in the Post indicating that David Kessler and I were working with them to get the higher ups in the administration to agree with the plan but that we had not been successful. Unfortunately, this may have blown our entire plan of getting this done under the radar screen. It is likely that this could now interfere with what David and I were trying to do. Yasmeen called several times for an interview; however, I did not see any purpose in getting involved in this controversial issue and also she had already written the story. See below: Wpost: 'Act now' on global vaccines to stop more-dangerous variants, experts warn Biden Vivek called me tonight after resume call with Dawn O'Connell and told me that a number of scientists and public health people that were originally on the advisory committee to Biden's election group we're writing to Ron Klain urging the administration to fire Rochelle Walensky as the CDC director. I believe this is very unfair since after I have spoken to her she r@hhs.gov dst story is really trying very hard to gain control of the agency and to change there are somewhat ossified culture. PRESS: MSNBC "Morning Joe" with Mika Brzezinski; Did Instagram and TikTok interviews with "influencers" including Actor Edgar Ramirez, Kathleen Barnes, Jax James, Merrick Hanna Chris Olsen/Ian Paget, Wisdom Kaye

Extracted statements

Rule-extracted, not adjudicated. The grade says what may be done with each one; read the document above before relying on any of them.

StatementGradeAttributionStance
There have been a number of discussions regarding the use of additional booster shots. own voice, substantive speaker_own asserts
I have been a strong proponent and have led the discussion in getting additional booster doses to the people who are immunosuppressed, and to get these doses to them imminently. own voice, substantive speaker_own asserts
The topic of the discussion was how we were going to handle the obvious heavy hurricane season that is approaching in the context of major outbreaks of COVID in the gulf states that have the lowest levels of vaccination and the highest levels of infection. own voice, substantive speaker_own asserts
As indicated above David Kessler and I and most recently with the support of Jeff have been trying to push the concept of getting the US government to make a major investment in Lonza company that makes the mRNA four Moderna. own voice, substantive speaker_own asserts
See below: Wpost: 'Act now' on global vaccines to stop more-dangerous variants, experts warn Biden Vivek called me tonight after resume call with Dawn O'Connell and told me that a number of scientists and public health people that were originally on the advisory committee to Biden's election group we're writing to Ron Klain urging the administration to fire Rochelle Walensky as the CDC director. own voice, substantive speaker_own reports

In context

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

  1. 2021-08-06 00:00 Anthony S. Fauci open
    August 6, 2021 - Global - 200,800,000/4,300,000; USA - 35,500,000/614,000 67,000 7-day average Cases continue to climb. There has been a lot of discussion about whether or not we should move quickly in instituting a program. I have been a very strong and vocal advocate to give booster shots immediately to people who are immune compromised such as those who are transplant recipients, those war on cancer chemotherapy, and those who are immunosuppressed because the border immune diseases. I have been explicit about that and have also been pushing the CDC to give us at least some preliminary data on the cohort studies that they say will inform us about the durability of protection among various groups of people. Other countries including France, Israel, and Germany, have decided to give boosts to the elderly right now. The UK has decided that they will start doing this in September. In this context, Jeff is getting very disillusioned with Rochelle and the CDC in their traditional way of not giving anyone even a slight hint of what the data shows until they are ready to announce it officially. A typical example of this has occurred today. I will be on a lot of press calls today and over the weekend and the CDC just announced that they have an MMWR that will be coming out together with a couple of papers in JAMA. I have no idea what is in these publications. This is unacceptable . Similar to what Sylvia burwell discuss with me years ago about firing Tom Frieden, Jeff is seriously thinking about either bringing in someone else to assist Rochelle or outright getting rid of her. I have argued that we should absolutely not fire her, and I have offered to speak with her about this issue. I had a long call with Rochelle tonight and explained the entire situation to her. I confirmed that I totally support her, but she really has to address the ingrained and somewhat ossified culture of the CDC. I particularly pointed out to her that she just cannot hold back information from Jeff and the White House team because she is waiting for her team to finalize data. If she has preliminary data she needs to tell us about it since we may need to talk about policy that would depend on such data. She just cannot give us an MMWR on the same day that is coming out. The last time this happened she said she could not give it to us because it was "under embargo ". I pointed out to her that this enraged Jeff since the CDC owns MMWR and as director of CDC she needs to realize that no one is trying to influence what goes into MMWR but it is important that she does not surprise Jeff or the president with something that she knows and that we do not know. I love Rochelle and she knows that. I explained to her what she needs to do to make things right with Jeff . A human explained to her the story from years ago when I saved Tom Frieden from getting fired by Sylvia Burwell because of how he messed up the ebola situation as a result of his listening to "his guys ". I believe that Rochelle gets it and will survive this very difficult time. I support her totally. PRESS: WJXX -Jacksonville TV; Bloomberg TV interview - Madison Mills; 1 hour with USA Today Editorial Board; Zoom Call with Michael Spector for his adio-book; MSNBC peacock TV with Joshua Johnson
  2. 2021-08-07 00:00 Anthony S. Fauci open
    August 7, 2021 The surge continues: Confirmed Cases (Thousands) tab in a wa [=I a bei a Ba oa = in o = =] = oni o ais ae afd Fi 5/10 Tra! Gf] New Daily Confirmed COVID-19 Cases in the U.S. T fe J Dial et wm tl =a il aed & &§ FR FR BS BEB : Soe fo eR Ba of F = artes 2020/2021 afi aya Sie 6S 120.2 62a He a1 Governor DeSantis is a complete disgrace. He is blocking the local authorities from mandating masks in various locations including schools. He is doing this while at the same time Florida is virtually on fire with surging cases. Approximately 20% of all the cases in the country right now are in Florida. When you add Florida with Texas you get about 40% of all the cases in the country. At the same time he together with his Greek chorus of Rand Paul and other GOP members of Congress together with all of the stooges at Fox News (Carlson, Hannity, Ingraham), continues to actively criticize me and talk virtually every day about my being wrong on everything I say and then I should be fired. This is an obviously calculated plan of disparaging me and any other scientists (but focusing heavily on me) that speak up against their crazy strategy. I am convinced even more that this is part of the total dystopia going on in certain elements of the country and it is all linked to "The Big Lie" involving the election and the denial of January 6. I really am worried more about the country then about myself since if this goes on I fear that our democracy is in dire danger. We had an important conversation today with Glenda Gray and Linda-Gail Bekker of the Republic of South Africa. The discussion centered around the fact that Glenda and Linda GAIL want to do a randomized placebo-controlled trial using the Moderna M RNA. The purpose of the study is to determine if and how well mRNA vaccine works in persons with HIV. We have a real problem with doing a randomized placebo-controlled trial and so we got on the phone with David Kessler, the people from NIAID including Cliff, John Mascola, Mary Maravich, Carl D., and others. I came up with a solution that everyone liked. That was to do a trial where each arm gets a prime in boost dose of Moderna and then one group gets randomized to placebo and the other group gets randomized to a third dose boost. This will kill two birds with one stone. It will avoid the controversial use of a placebo and at the same time tell you whether the mRNA vaccine works in persons with HIV and whether and whether or not they need a boost for optimal response. Confirmed Cases (Thousands) aS aE 4afiz 5f1G Global USA New Daily Confirmed COVID-19 Cases in the U.S. RL? '2 Tes) a/13 t] Iii layas LUIS 1/22 Le 2020/2021 ala ares a4 ae a/1l [hed Tey a3 ais Grae 124.9 wt FE a]
  3. 2021-08-08 00:00 Anthony S. Fauci open
    August 8, 2021 - Global USA PRESS: CNN "GPS" with Fareed Zakaria; NBC "Meet the Press" with Chuck Todd Ron DeSantis Dr. Fauchi Global USA
  4. 2021-08-09 00:00 Anthony S. Fauci open
    August 9, 2021 - Global USA Cases 140,000 yesterday. It seems that my prediction of 200,000/day will come true unfortunately. We're having continual and difficult discussions concerning boosters. With my strong persuasion we have now finally arrived to the reality that we must give an additional dose to immunocompromised people as quickly as possible. The real issue that we are struggling with is when how and to whom we should give boosters among the population in general. Clearly, we want to stagger it so that we don't have rush to the gate. We're trying to get as much data as possible to validate a decision to start giving it to the elderly at approximately 8 months following their initial vaccination. Share of people who received at least one dose of COVID-19 Our World vaccine, Aug 8, 2021 Total number of people who received at least one vaccine dose, divided by the total population of the country. In Data © Add country Europe 50.3% North America 50.26 South America 46.5% Asia 30.3% Oceania 26.3% Africa 3.956 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% Source: Official data collated by Our World in Data - Last updated ? August 2021, 11:20 (London time} Mote: This data is only available for countries which report the breakdown of doses administered by first a QurWorld|nData.orz/coronavirus « CC BY -- Global USA I continue to struggle with having to defend the CDC against reasonable concern about the fact that they are generally behind the curve when it comes to accumulating data that would inform proper public health action. He gets back to previous conversations that we had concerning the entrenched culture at CDC who feel that they know best and they are not accountable to anyone. Under non pandemic conditions this goes un-noticed. However, in the middle of an outbreak of this proportion it is a glaring deficit. PRESS: Black News Channel (TV); Hugh Hewitt Radio; Navajo Times Interview; BBC World News TV
  5. 2021-08-10 00:00 Anthony S. Fauci
    August 10, 2021 - Global USA The soaring of cases continue. It is really looking rather ominous in that there have been numerous reports of gatherings of completely vaccinated people in a moderate to small sized party 20 thirty 40 people where you have outbreak of infections among these individuals. It is very clear that this virus is very different in its ability to transmit compared to the alpha variant. There have been a number of discussions regarding the use of additional booster shots. I have been a strong proponent and have led the discussion in getting additional booster doses to the people who are immunosuppressed, and to get these doses to them imminently. We have had she several meetings with Jeff and the team and in some cases with the FDA to try and expedite this. It becomes an issue of the clinical data in a somewhat preliminary form balanced against the need of the FDA to have firm data before they modify the EUA. The tension between Jeff and the CDC continues in that the culture does not allow the CDC to share data in real time in a situation in which you actually need data in real time to make a decision. The lack of confidence in Rochelle and the rest of the CDC is manifested by the fact that Jeff is having me as opposed to Rochelle brief the President about things that appear to be strictly epidemiological. The same holds true for briefings of the principles and the governors. I don't know what to do to help Rochelle change the culture of the CDC because this is a decades-long problem. Vivek is in total agreement with me on this issue. I met with the President today in the state dining room of the White House to discuss together with the administrator of FEMA Deanne Criswell and Assistant to the POTUS for Homeland Security Liz Sherwood-Randall among others and together with Natalie and Jeff. The topic of the discussion was how we were going to handle the obvious heavy hurricane season that is approaching in the context of major outbreaks of COVID in the gulf states that have the lowest levels of vaccination and the highest levels of infection. I presented the epidemiology data and Liz and Deanne presented the hurricane data. My impression was that the president was not particularly happy with Deanne's presentations since she was not able to give him the answer to a lot of his questions. Nonetheless being the gentleman that he is he did not really act annoyed with her although as I get to know his body language better I could sense that he was disappointed. As indicated above David Kessler and I and most recently with the support of Jeff have been trying to push the concept of getting the US government to make a major investment in Lonza company that makes the mRNA four Moderna. We're making some progress in the implementation of the concept of the US government bankrolling Lonza to expand this capability to supply billions of doses of vaccine to the developing world. We had been working on this in collaboration with Peter Staley, James Krellenstein, and David Barr. Unfortunately, Peter in his enthusiasm to get things done quickly, orchestrated a letter signed by 175 public health advocates essentially criticizing the Biden administration for acting too slowly in getting vaccine to the developing world. They sent the letter to the president simultaneously with sending it to the Washington Post and my media friends Yasmeen Abutaleb and Dan Diamond wrote an article in the Post indicating that David Kessler and I were working with them to get the higher ups in the administration to agree with the plan but that we had not been successful. Unfortunately, this may have blown our entire plan of getting this done under the radar screen. It is likely that this could now interfere with what David and I were trying to do. Yasmeen called several times for an interview; however, I did not see any purpose in getting involved in this controversial issue and also she had already written the story. See below: Wpost: 'Act now' on global vaccines to stop more-dangerous variants, experts warn Biden Vivek called me tonight after resume call with Dawn O'Connell and told me that a number of scientists and public health people that were originally on the advisory committee to Biden's election group we're writing to Ron Klain urging the administration to fire Rochelle Walensky as the CDC director. I believe this is very unfair since after I have spoken to her she r@hhs.gov dst story is really trying very hard to gain control of the agency and to change there are somewhat ossified culture. PRESS: MSNBC "Morning Joe" with Mika Brzezinski; Did Instagram and TikTok interviews with "influencers" including Actor Edgar Ramirez, Kathleen Barnes, Jax James, Merrick Hanna Chris Olsen/Ian Paget, Wisdom Kaye
  6. 2021-08-11 00:00 Anthony S. Fauci open
    August 11, 2021 David Kessler is pissed at Peter Staley. David feels betrayed that Peter mentioned his name and my name in his interview with Yasmeen. Last night I called up Courtney Rowe and had a long about the pros and cons of responding to Yasmeen who has been trying to get a comment from me regarding the article. We came to the conclusion that it would not do any good since the quote could be misinterpreted. I agree with Courtney. However we may have a problem that the article may set us back in getting jeff's support to push for billions of dollars to expand capacity to be directed 2 low and middle income countries. I will try to repair any damage that has been done to this effort. I had a good conversation with Peter this morning and I believe Peter realizes that he may had done some damage by mentioning my name and David's name in his interview with Yasmeen. It is again a delicate balance of trying to get an activist-driven push to get the right thing done and still operate within the system that alone has the capability of getting the right thing done with all of the political sensitivities involved. Email from David Barr to David Kessler:
  7. 2021-08-12 00:00 Anthony S. Fauci open
    August 12, 2021 - Global USA Now averaging (7 day) >100,000 cases per day Hospitaliations in children increasing per 100,000 population United States I 0-17 Years New Admissions of Patients with Confirmed COVID-19 per & Gas 100,000 Population by Age Group, United States 46,832
  8. 2021-08-13 00:00 Anthony S. Fauci open
    August 13, 2021 Cases continue to surge We had multiple zoom calls and conversations today concerning the proper approach to his booster vaccinations. In addition, based on this submission to the FDA on data in diminished response in the immune compromised, the ACIP recommended that people who are immune compromised including transplant patients, cancer patients on chemotherapy, any patients on severe immunosuppressive therapy, people with advanced HIV disease, and people with primary immune deficiencies receive a booster dose. We also had considerable conversations about the best way to roll out the recommendations to boost the entire population in an orderly fashion starting likely sometime in mid to late September. The COVID team agrees that this is the way to go; however, it must be done within the context of the FDA regulatory framework. I am pushing my people who are doing clinical trials on booster doses to get data as quickly as possible to the FDA and the CDC so that they can analyze it for the purpose of making policy. Jeff is very sensitive to the fact that he does not want us to look like we have come in too late to the boosting game. This is actually not the case since as mentioned above , if anything, the UK is actually behind us. There will certainly be international concern by the fact that we in the USA are giving 36,300,000/618,600 boosts to otherwise healthy people while the rest of the world is lacking even their first boost . However, the argument that I am giving is that the USA is donating more doses and money two international vaccines for low and middle income countries then the entire rest of the world combined . At this point we have contracted for 500 million doses to be distributed in the following cadence: 200 million doses by the end of 2021 and 300 million doses before the first half of 2022 ends . In addition, we have already given away 110 million doses to 60 countries. This includes 80 million of our own doses. In addition, the USA has either given or pledged $4 billion to COVax. There is an interesting concept that is heavily debated among us. Although we all agree that we need to do as described above, we are not fully appreciative of what the decrease in incidents of infection actually means if the current rate of hospitalization and death appears to remain stable. Are we vaccinating people with a boost because we feel that ultimately those increases in infection will lead to increases in hospitalization and deaths, or are we concerned that even if vaccinated people get infected and spread the infection that we are trying to suppress transmission in addition to serious disease. Stay tuned for how this all rolls out. PRESS: WTOP with JJ Green; Twitter responses with WH Digital team; CBS Radio Los Angeles; CBS Radio NYC; White House twitter with digital team;
  9. 2021-08-13 00:00 Anthony S. Fauci open
    Aug 13, 2021 rca nape Ancor yo 4 anthagani. PhD Oct 2020 visualization by Kristen P; someone who wants to kill me. All of this together with the stress associated with the fact that the president and others in the administration rely heavily on me four major decisions and I have very little staff relatively speaking who could help me. PRESS: CBS "Face the Nation" with Nancy Cordes

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