A single line often inverts meaning once you see what it
answers, so neighbouring messages are always shown.
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September 2, 2021 - Global - USA - Weekly average 149,000 cases/day Global USA Important reflection about "controlling the message" - I thought I would make this comment now since it is something that has been ongoing for some time. It relates to the fact that this administration particularly in the form of Jeff does not at all want to interfere with the science or dictate what the science should be saying. This is completely different from the interference with science and the actual contradiction of science that was so rampant during the Trump administration. However, in the situation where we came out with the statements that we should begin boosters on the week of the 20th of September and at 8 months from the time individuals finish their original immunization regimen, it is clear that the timing was not totally science driven . It was logistically driven. In other words, we found out in late July that it was clear based on the hint of what we were seeing here in the United States and what the Israelis were seeing that we would need to boost. From a logistics standpoint we could not begin to do that until September which would put it eight months following the time that the first people got their vaccination in January. And so the eight month timeframe was not based on any biological or clinical science. It was based purely on logistics. And yet whenever we have a discussion Jeff insists that we stay with eight months because the science dictates that it is 8 months. That is just not true. It very well may be and in fact it looks like it should be earlier, such as six months. The reason Jeff did not want to change or veer away from 8 months is that he did not want it to seem that we were saying one thing on one day, and a week or so later we would change it, for example changing from eight months to six months. I consider this a fixation on messaging which is really unnecessary. I would have said we chose eight months because it was already eight months from the time that people got their first vaccination. Jeff was afraid that we would get criticized that we should have been doing it earlier if we switch from eight to six months. I would have said what the truth was that we picked eight months at first because that was the logistic reason and as soon as we found out that it was better to do it at six months we would then change to six months. It is the truth and there's nothing wrong with that. Important principals meeting today in the SCIF. the meeting was led by Jake Sullivan of NSC . The subject matter was how the United states could take a leadership role in the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, the question arose about how we can get foreign countries including China and India to participate in the process of getting doses to low and middle-income countries. A number of the principals weighed in including Samantha Powers, Tony Blinken, and others. Although I have a keen interest in this concept and I have been discussing it in detail with Jeff and with Peter Staley and David Kessler, I did not preemptively make any comments since they did not ask me to. However, in the future I will give my opinion as how we can best accomplish this goal.
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Sept. 3, 2021 - Global USA Continued tension between CDC /Rochelle and Jeff concerning the rollout of the booster program. The consistent problem is the concern that Jeff has that the ACIP might come out with significant variance from what we had planned. Jeff does not want to control the science , but he clearly wants to make sure that we do not have a garbled message. Going back over this in time, Jeff wanted to get out a crisp message of what we will do with boosters because he felt that if we omo (virtually) -- 39,800,000/644,800 Global USA did not, the country would say that we were behind the curve and that we allowed people to die without getting boosted. For that reason we put out the statement that we have a plan to boost. Now among some it appears that the White House and the medical team haver gotten ahead of the science and the usual process , which actually is not the case. The National Geographic documentary "FAUCI" came out yesterday at Telluride Film Festival. I am understandably concerned that the radical right and others who hate me will consider the film self-aggrandizing. However, it is very clear that I did not solicit this film. it started off as a film about HIV driven by Janet Tobias. At the onset Glenda Gray and I were featured people in the film centered around HIV vaccines. When the producers that Janet met with saw some of the filmed material they felt that it would be better to do a film about me focusing on the concept of "The Public Servant". When National Geographic took over, they made it a very polished documentary which was not at all a hero worship of me but was a realistic portrayal of the stress and strain and ups and downs of what I have been through with multiple outbreaks, particularly HIV and COVID. Having said that the film will likely be praised by many but also used by some to continue to attack me. Such as life. Participated in "The European House" Ambrosetti Conference in Lake Como (virtually) with panelists Kai-fu Lee, Stephane Bancel and moderated by Mariya Gabriel Difficulties setting in with the booster rollout. As I suspected it is not going to be a smooth rollout of all three companies being able to provide boosters by September the 20th. One of the key obstacles has been Moderna who is insisting on making their booster dose 50 micrograms. Given the fact that everything else has been done with 100 micrograms this will cause a delay by at least a few weeks for the rollout of the Moderna product. Therefore, this will lead to a disjointed program. Jeff is not happy, but it is what it is. PRESS: Podcast with Andy Slavitt; Canadian Broadcast TV; MSNBC with Chris Hayes
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September 4, 2021 - Global - USA - 39,800,000/644,800 Still a fair amount of confusion and concern about the rollout of the booster program. David Kessler comes down hard on the fact that the ACIP cannot be out of sync with the FDA. If the FDA says that boosters are OK for people 18 and older, David feels it is not appropriate for the ACIP to restrict it to 65 years of age and older. Obviously, Jeff is upset by what has gone on since this is what he has tried to avoid.
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September 5, 2021- Global USA Very nice thing happened tonight. Jeff called me by phone just to thank me for everything that I am doing. He read the transcripts of my appearances on the Sunday shows and wanted to tell me how grateful he was for the fact that I've been doing this for such a long time, much longer than any of the others , and he thought that it would be important for me to know that everybody appreciates what I'm doing. PRESS: CBS "Face the Nation"; CNN with Jim Acosta o have me Global USA 40,500,000/652,500
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2021-09-06 00:00
Anthony S. Fauci
September 6, 2021 - Global USA Jeff brought over my house this evening the POTUS speech for Wednesday to have me check for any issues or inaccuracies. I made a few edits, but nothing substantial.
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September 7, 2021 - Global USA Cases averaging >150,000/day. Going back and forth with FDA (Peter Marks) about whether there will be enough safety data on young people to justify boosters for everyone. Peter is aligned with me. I feel that if the safety data holds we should definitely give boosts to everyone at every age. I do not believe that you have to show a diminution in protection against hospitalization in order to trigger a booster. No way in a clinical trial would you require hospitalization to be a primary endpoint. We need to prevent symptomatic disease in everyone as well as preventing the spread of infection. That is why we need a booster for everyone . I have said it before , and I will say it now that I feel the proper regimen for COVID-19 vaccinations should be a prime followed in four weeks by a boost followed and five to seven months buy a third shot boost. PRESS: CNN "New Day" with Jim Sciutto; NPR "Morning Edition" with Rachel Martin; La Stampa (Italian TV); New York Times Podcast with Apoorva Mandavilli
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September 8, 2021 I had an interesting visit today in the Oval Office with President Biden. I was there to brief him about the mu variant as well as to go over his six-point speech that he is going to be delivering tomorrow. Clearly, President Biden is troubled by getting the right message to the American people. He is concerned that people would be under the impression that we will never get out of the oppression of this pandemic. And so, he struggled with the words in his upcoming speech which I had the opportunity over the last few days to help edit. He was struggling with the issue of how we can say that the unvaccinated people or an impediment to where we want to go without discouraging the vaccinated people from feeling that even though they are vaccinated they are powerless to be able to lead a normal existence so long as the unvaccinated people are continuing to propagate the spread of the virus. I suggested to him that instead of saying that the 25% of the population that are unvaccinated are hindering the 75% of the population that are vaccinated , he should focus on the fact that the unvaccinated people are not harming the vaccinated people physically but they are preventing us from returning to a normal life which at the end of the day is a negative issue for the 75% of the population who are vaccinated. It is a complicated message, and he is struggling with it . I am convinced that he is an extremely sincere and good person who wants to do the right thing.
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September 9, 2021 - Global - 222,400,000/4,600,000; USA - 40,500,000/652,500 >160,000 infections today President gave his national speech today on the 6th part plan to combat the delta variant. As mentioned above I played a role and editing his speech and in discussing yet with the president himself yesterday as well as with Jeff and the White House team. PRESS: Podcast with David Rubenstein; Fireside chat with The Boston Globe; NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt; PBS NewsHour with Judy Woodruff; CNN "AC360" with Anderson Cooper;
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Sept. 10, 2021 PRESS: NBC News Now (Online TV) with Savannah Sellers; Regional TV -RaleighDurham (Jonah Kaplan); St. Louis (Cory Stark); Little Rock, AR (Mitch McCoy); "The Skimm (Alex Carr); Politica Ya Unvision (TSi-Tsi-Ki Felix); Telemondo (Julio Vaquiero) Great review of the documentary "FAUCI": The Heavy Burden of Being Dr. Anthony Fauci MISGUIDED HATE The new documentary "Fauci" follows the infectious-disease expert--the COVID-19 adviser to Trump and Biden--throughout the pandemic, probing his deepest thoughts and fears. Nick Schager Updated Sep. 10, 2021 5:28AM ET / Published Sep. 10, 2021 4:51AM ET National Geographic for Disney+ "It reduces my trust in humanity" is how National Institute of Health (NIH) nurse and bioethicist Dr. Christine Grady describes her feelings about the abuse heaped upon her husband, Dr. Anthony Fauci, in Fauci. For those who've grown frustrated with their unvaccinated fellow citizens' egotism, stupidity, and recklessness, it's a familiar and relatable sentiment, and one that colors John Hoffman and Janet Tobias' documentary (in select theaters Sept. 10) about the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden. Driven by interviews with Fauci himself, it's an insightful portrait of a man who's dedicated his career to helping solve some of the world's most serious disease-related crises, as well as a celebration of the selfless courage, compassion, and open-mindedness of a physician who's stood tall in the face of unjust vilification and threats. Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, and Lou Dobbs (remember him?) all appear in Fauci, slamming the doctor in various disgusting ways and, in the process, stirring up opposition to the very figure most responsible for guiding the nation through the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. When Fauci describes recently opening an envelope that covered him in white powder, and the immediate thoughts that ran through his head--is this a hoax, anthrax or ricin?--Hoffman and Tobias' film underlines the constant and immediate danger that Fauci is now in, thanks to a percentage of the population that views him as the embodiment of both the pandemic and the social restrictions required to mitigate it. He's at the center of a Republican-led maelstrom born from ignorance and insanity, and as he remarks about the global catastrophe that's still unfolding, "I think we're going to get through it, but we're going to get through it in spite of this divisiveness, and this politicization. We're not going to get through it because of it." Fauci's opinion is offered up in the context of Fauci's look at the 1980s-1990s AIDS crisis that consumed the doctor, and which was finally wrestled under control via a combination of good medicine, staunch activism, and two opposing sides learning that collaboration was more productive than combativeness. Peter Staley and other AIDS activists from that era speak candidly about their fight for AIDS attention and action, primarily through the Larry Kramer-led AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP), which aggressively made noise in public and scientific spaces in order to oppose prejudice and demand help. Convinced that the government wasn't doing enough to research and treat the fatal disease--which was largely decried as an affliction that plagued only gay men and women--they saw Fauci as a bureaucrat who didn't care about the sick and the suffering, and castigated him accordingly. As Fauci himself explains in a lengthy interview that forms the core of Fauci, he heard that condemnation but soldiered on anyway. Breakthroughs regarding the identification of AIDS as a virus, and how to effectively stymie its growth through a cocktail of drugs, were earned through countless hours of work, and in an environment that became increasingly hostile thanks to the fury of those who were losing loved ones to the disease, and vehement that more could be done to save them. In what would be a turning point in the AIDS fight, in Fauci's life, and in the history of medical science, Fauci chose to listen to those voices, attending an ACT UP meeting where he went toe-to-toe with his critics, and then speaking on their behalf at a 1990s AIDS conference in San Francisco. In doing so, he charted a new course in which the experiences and input of subjects were taken into greater consideration during clinical trials. Fauci makes plain the parallels between Fauci's "bookending" battles against AIDS and COVID-19, along the way depicting a man who's given his life to the investigation and treatment of the world's worst ailments. Sandwiched in between those two all-caps epidemics were his clashes with SARS, Swine flu, MERS and Ebola, against which he led the charge. In a telling moment in Hoffman and Tobias' nonfiction biopic, Fauci says that he sought to destigmatize Ebola by hugging recovered patient Nina Pham at a press conference, and such leadership-through-example is again seen in a late clip of him receiving the COVID-19 vaccine on a stage in front of cameras. Time and again, the individual presented by the film is one who puts others first and takes risks in order to guide and reassure the American public. "Time and again, the individual presented by the film is one who puts others first and takes risks in order to guide and assuage the American public." He's also a scientific titan who, having served as adviser to seven presidents (beginning with Ronald Reagan), isn't afraid to deliver unpleasant truths that many--including his bosses--don't necessarily want to hear (or, at least, don't want to hear said into a microphone). Clips of Fauci ruffling Trump's feathers by pushing back on his hydroxychloroquine nonsense, and setting out a realistic timetable for a vaccine, reconfirm this point, painting him as an honest, candid grown-up in a milieu that's full of selfinterested officials who'd prefer to tell people what they want to hear. It's clear that he's made mistakes over the course of his tenure; The New York Times global health reporter Apoorva Mandavilli highlights, for example, Fauci's confusing mask messaging. Yet the fact that Fauci has now been labeled all manner of undeserved things by right-wing anti-science loons--at great emotional cost to him, his wife Christine, and their three daughters--only accentuates his bravery, resilience, and staunch adherence to reason and evidence. Global USA Since no amount of logical arguments, cajoling or bribery will change the minds of zealous conspiracy theorists, Fauci probably won't convince skeptics that the NIH bigwig is a paragon of public service. Nonetheless, through a mix of archival footage and interviews that smoothly segue between the past and present, Hoffman and Tobias' documentary proves a tribute to a legitimate national hero, one whose ambition and resolve are as great as his empathy and thoughtfulness. Even when it skews a bit too heavily toward lionization, the lasting impression left by Fauci is that we're lucky to have this 80year-old man on our side.