A single line often inverts meaning once you see what it
answers, so neighbouring messages are always shown.
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August 22, 2021 (Sunday) - (no shows for me today - predominantly Vivek Murthy) Had a zoom call today with Jeff and the medical team planning how we can roll out the booster situation putting all the pieces together with the FDA, the CDC, and the acip. We also heard that FISA will get it's BLA on Monday August 23rd. One of the important parts of the discussion was my relating data that we have received from the Minister of Health of Israel. The data clearly show that hospitalizations for people with two doses of vaccine are going up significantly particularly among the elderly and those with underlying conditions . In addition, they are showing that the efficacy of two doses against infection and symptomatic disease has dramatically diminished, and when you give the third dose boost, this turns it around dramatically and diminishes the breakthrough infections. These data are well ahead of the somewhat disjointed data from the CDC. However what it does do is_that we are correct in asking for boosters essentially for everyone. Global USA In addition, I am going to pursue with calls to Peter Staley and others (Krellenstein and Barr) as well as a follow up call with Jeff , David Kessler, and me to plan a more coherent strategy about getting doses led by the United states to the rest of the world. The plan to do this would be to increase dramatically the production capacity of the companies particularly moderna even if we have to deal with Lonza directly since Lonza is a major multilocation company that is producing the vaccine for Moderna. Stay tuned. In a follow up conversation with Jeff and David Kessler, Jeff was amenable to pursuing the plan of Peter and the activist group ; however, he wanted to make sure that we got the situation with the Moderna booster straight before we started to go to war with Moderna to get them to cooperate with us on the Lonza deal. I believe that Jeff is serious about this and we may in fact go that route once we get the approvals to use moderna as part of the booster plan. In this regard, Tom Frieden call me up tonight urging me to push ahead with the "nuclear option "a forcing moderna to cooperate in expanding capacity for the developing world. Tom feels that moderna or a bunch of used car salesman and he does not trust them at all. He has stated , which is partially true, that they would be nothing without the NIH and the federal government. In this regard, Beth Cameron from NSC wanted me to look over a summit plan for addressing the global issue of COVID. I wrote back to her and emphasized that I feel strongly that the United states should take a PEPFAR-type approach in assuming any leadership role in getting doses to low and middle income countries. The Israeli data are emerging as extremely important since it is clear , as they are about a month and a half ahead of us and everything, that the vaccine efficacy is diminishing significantly overtime against infection and symptomatic disease. However, unlike the situation here in the USA, the Israelis are starting to see a diminution in protection against hospitalization and death. This is exactly what we have predicted in our decision to move ahead with the booster program. Furthermore, the Israelis are starting to see a very positive effect following giving boosters to over 1,000,000 people in the sense that the number of infections have dramatically diminished in association with the administration of the boosters.
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August 23, 2021 - Global USA BLA granted for Pfizer by the FDA!! I just did a site visit to the Department of State facility that does the screening for diplomatic pouches and mail. This is the facility that has been screening my mail ever since I had the anthrax scare with the power in one of my letters literally one year ago four days from now. Brett Rowland arrange for me to go there to thank the people in the facility and to encourage them in their work. They were very grateful but I took the time to visit them and there was the usual selfies galore. Another important issue today was that we were told by Larry Tabak at the state department wanted us to remove any names of people in Afghanistan that we are interacting with through Global USA grants or contracts from our public facing databases and websites. The reason for this is that we are concerned that the Taliban will use the websites to identify people in Afghanistan with connections to the United states and would then assassinate them. It is very clear that things are not going well following the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. The Taliban has easily taken over the country and now we are having trouble getting Americans as well as Afghanistan allies such as interpreters out of Kabul safely. It's a very bad time for the Biden administration since they are being severely criticized for not having the right intelligence capability to indicate to them that the Taliban would take over so quickly without allowing time for us to withdraw our own personnel in an orderly fashion. What we did was withdraw the military first thinking that we would have ample time to withdraw diplomats and other personnel safely . Obviously this is not the case and it is still a very tenuous situation in Afghanistan. PRESS: Podcast 70 Over 70; NPR "All Things Considered" with Mary Louise Kelly; Podcast "A Starting Point" with Mark Kassen and Chris Evans; PBS "NewsHour" with Judy Woodruff; MSNBC "Peacock" with Mehdi Hasan;
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August 24, 2021 - Global USA Cases, hospitalizations and deaths (to a lesser extent) continue to soar. More conspiracy theory like letters keep coming in from congressmen and senators trying to link us to the origin of COVID-19. This is an amazing and unbelievable waste of our time and has no bearing whatsoever on what we have actually done with that minor, minor $125,000 grant to the Wuhan institute of virology. It is totally mind boggling how they are distorting the truth to try and distract from the reality of what actually had happened during the Trump administration where he lied and underplayed the outbreak. Strange but not surprising thing happened as a result of several of the shows that I was on over the last 24 hours. On several of the TV shows I was talking mostly about the favorable aspect of the final approval of the BLA for Pfizer. However, in one of the conversations someone asked when I thought we were to get back to normal. I gave the usual caveats but then went on to say if we get as many people vaccinated as we possibly can as quickly as we possibly can we could diminish the number of cases and if we get through the winter which will be complicated by influenza and other respiratory infections, then I believe we could get back to some form of real normality by the spring of 2022. Much to my surprise I got a call this morning from Jeff clearly upset because the news media had jumped on that and said that Biden has been saying we're going to get out of this soon and Fauci who knows what's going on is saying it's going to be into next year. I am getting a little bit concerned, even though I understand Jeff's concern about the distortion of a message for a political purpose, that we may be tailoring a message that is not totally aligned with the truth. In fact, I believe we would be very lucky if we're back to normal by the spring of 2022. I told Jeff that from now on when asked to predict I will just say we don't know. This might actually not go over very well with the press anyway, but that is what I will say. Of note shortly after my call with Jeff, Courtney Rowe called me up in a much more Global USA conciliatory manner saying she understands how these things get taken out of context and said that she heard it a lot more the way I meant it; however, we really need to be careful that people would be distorting our message. I agree with her. PRESS: CBS "This Morning" with Gayle King; NBC "Today"; MSNBC "Morning Joe"; Telemundo TV Hoy Dia with Adamari Lopez;
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August 25, 2021 - Global USA Cases continue > 120,000/day Had an extremely interesting Zoom meeting yesterday with the Israeli Minister of Health and several Israeli scientists. The Israelis have always been about a month or so ahead of the USA temporarily with regard to the dynamics of the outbreak, the percentage of population vaccinated, and their recent decision to provide booster shots as third doses first to their elderly and then to progressively younger people. On the zoom call that Danny Douek and Bob Seder helped organize since Danny spent a year sabbatical in Israel, it became clear that's what we suspected was actually true. On the call for the Israelis were: Nachman Ash, Minister of Health of Israel; Sharon Alroy-Preis - Director of Public Health Services for Israel; Ran Achitov - Senior Advisor to the Israel Prime Minister Naftali Bennett; Ron Milo - Weizmann Institute; Boaz Lev. The Israelis were seeing a gradual waning of protection of the Pfizer vaccine over a few months to the point of protection against infection and mild disease was dramatically diminished after several months. Importantly, they found that the protection against severe disease leading to hospitalization also significantly decreased. This latter point is extremely important because the data from the USA cohorts was suggesting that But did not definitively show it. In addition, they gave booster shots to about 1.6 million people and have shown that the booster shots dramatically reconstitute the protection against infection. clinical disease and hospitalization. Furthermore, they found a decrease in the Ro strongly suggesting that the booster also diminished transmission. These findings completely validate I would decision to begin giving boosters here in the United States. I briefed Jeff on this last night and we will arrange an additional call with the Israelis including John Mascola, David Kessler, and others involved in our program. PRESS: The Times of Israel: Health Ministry officials said to update Fauci on COVID booster shot campaign Today, 9:02 pm 38,300,000/63 1,400 • US top infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci testifies before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, on Capitol Hill in Washington, on July 20, 2021. (J. Scott Applewhite, Pool/AP) The Kan public broadcaster reports that top Health Ministry officials, including director-general Nachman Ash, held a virtual meeting with Dr. Anthony Fauci to discuss Israel's COVID-19 vaccine booster shot campaign. The report says that the Israeli officials updated Fauci, who is director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and US President Joe Biden's chief medical advisor, on figures showing that the third vaccine dose provides increased protection against infection and serious morbidity. The US is planning to begin administering booster shots next month.
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2021-08-26 00:00
Anthony S. Fauci
August 26, 2021 - Global - 213,400,000/4,460,000; USA - 38,300,000/631,400 Cases still soaring The people in the White House medical team are all excited now about the Israeli data, and they want me to arrange for resume between members of our White House team and our Israeli colleagues. I would be happy to do this since I want them to appreciate the extraordinary data that the Israelis have. Confirmed Cases (Thousands) = b bh Mm wu ab a Lh a2 Li a Lh oa S oa S oa S Ln a the shadows 38,500,000/632,800 New Daily Confirmed COVID-19 Cases in the U.S. 2020/2021 165.9 PRESS: Washington Post: A science in the shadows Controls on 'gain of function' experiments with supercharged pathogens have been undercut despite concerns about lab leaks By David Willman and Madison Muller
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August 27, 2021 - Global - 214,500,000/4,470,000; USA - 38,500,000/632,800 Just as a follow up over the last days to weeks - I continue to get attacked viciously by the far right social media including FOX News. they are still dancing around the inappropriate conflating of gain of function research (See Willmann article above) and the origin of the virus. I am starting to get so annoyed by this that for the first time ever I'm seriously discussing with Christine the timeline not my stepping down from this ridiculously thankless situation that I'm in . I say that still knowing that it is very unlikely that I will do that. (Axios) POTUS slight mis-speak - Interesting situation arose today. We were in our pre brief for the White House presser that would take place in 1/2 an hour. In the middle of the pre brief , president Biden called me up on my cell phone. He said he was in with the Prime Minister of Israel and the Prime Minister was telling him that Israel will be giving their booster shot at five months. The president wanted to know what we were doing about that and were we following the lead of Israel. I told him that we were sticking with eight months but since the ultimate decision will be with the acip that they would likely give us the possibility of a range from six to nine months and so depending on the data, we would have the option of giving it earlier . However, for now we were sticking with eight months beginning on September the 20th. Very shortly after I said that the president got up and said that we might start boosting earlier perhaps at five months because the Israelis are doing that and he spoke to me about it. As one might imagine this created a flurry among the press and White House comms . The good news is that everybody in White House comms knew exactly what I said to the President and so it was just one of those things that the President will say what the president will say (see below). And has been wanting to get more closely involved in the data flow and information flow . In this regard, he has asked me to see if I could get him more involved in the various meetings that we have among the White House medical team . I have arranged that and we will have him join the weekly meeting that Vivek organizers among the White House docs. In addition I have arranged for him to visit NIH and sit down for a roundtable chat mostly but the people from the VRC. We did that today and it was interesting as usual since Eric is a very smart guy. PRESS: TV and Radio for local stations: Black Information Network (Radio); Rolling Out (TV); The Root (Radio); Instagram Live with Geoff Edgers (Washington Post); White House plans to clarify Biden boosters statement Caitlin Owens (Axios)
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August 28, 2021 (Saturday) - Zoom meetings with Jeff - There is concern about sticking with the eight month projection for the beginning of boosting. Jeff is adamant not to waver on the 8 month projection even though it is clear from the data in Israel as well as from the general knowledge that in Israel there is waning of protection as early as five months. I will be on all the Sunday shows tomorrow and I will have to walk a tightrope to stick with eight months on the one hand and leave the flexibility for earlier than eight months on the other. 1.29% + 80-95 ° © ca = a « I! Ajasanas Hulusny sased % 2. The intelligence community report on the origins came out and in some respects it was good news in that they felt fairly confident that it was not a bioweapon nor that it was bioengineered. They still left open the possibility that it could be a lab leak ; However, more elements of the intelligence community felt that it was a natural occurrence compared to the single component (FBI) who seemed to feel strongly that it was a lab leak , although this is based on no data at all. The reaction to the report was rather typical with Bob Garry saying that he was pleased that it ruled out bio engineering and David Relman making the incredible statement in a Nature news article that he would like to see all of the records of the NIH in their dealing with Chinese scientists. Truly amazing! There is no doubt that he has an agenda here and that is unfortunate.
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August 29, 2021 (Sunday) - Cases continue to surge with increases in hospitalizations as well as deaths. The cases have been between 100,000 and 150,000 for several days in a row now. Thus far the piece by David Willman has not received much attention. It has only appeared online and I expected it to be on the front page of the Sunday Washington Post and in fact it was not there it is possible that the situation in Afghanistan as well as the horror of the upcoming hurricane Ida has pushed this out of the news. I will have to navigate all of the difficult questions today since the White House is putting me out on all the Sunday shows. The boosts that the Israelis are giving or having a profoundly positive effect on deminishing the number of cases that are severe . See below: Israel: Two weeks after the third dose campaign, and for the past two weeks, there is a decrease in the fraction of cases who become seriously ill https://bit.ly/3gKS7fY 39,100,000/637,400 PRESS: CNN "State of the Union" with Jake Tapper; ABC "This Week" with Martha Raddatz; NBC "Meet the Press" with Chuck Todd;
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August 30, 2021 >150,000 cases today Did podcast with American Muslim Health Professionals Jeff continues to be frustrated with Rochelle. she does not seem to have the control over her agency that Jeff would like to have her execute. He is frustrated that she doesn't tell anybody what's coming out in MMWR as if it were a private journal as opposed to what it really is - the journal of the CDC. In addition, Jeff is very concerned that she is out of touch with what goes on in the acip and in other various components that interact with the CDC. The other night I had to talk him down from feeling like he had to let her go. I continue to have faith in her and that she is a very good person but she is dealing with a rigid and secretive organization that has been that way decades before she arrived. PRESS: Sinclair TV; TikTok with influencers including Grammy Award-winner (4X) Jason Isbell;