A single line often inverts meaning once you see what it
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Nov. 4, 2021 - Global - 247,472,724/5,012,337; USA - 46,180,190/747,970 Very important Day!! Senate HELP Hearing - I together with Dawn O'Connell, Janet Woodcock, Rochelle Walensky testified before the Senate HELP hearing chaired by Patty Murray . We had expected to have the same conflict with Senator Rand Paul who continues to lie egregiously about the gain of function research which he claims was done at the Wuhan Institute of Virology funded by NIAID. During the last Hearing I had a direct conflict with him in which he accused me of being responsible for the death of four million people by funding research at Wuhan. At that time, I angrily said that he was the liar. He continued along this line totally misrepresenting facts and accusing me of lying before the Congress. However, in contrast to what I did last time I did not aggressively call him a liar, which he is. What I did was very calmly counter all of his arguments that this was a proven leak from the Wuhan lab, that we were continuing to fund the Wuhan lab, and that I was responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic. Chairperson Patty Murray was extremely helpful in allowing me to counter his ranting lies . I closed the session by saying then I have a great deal of respect for the institution of the United States Senate, but in fact everything he said was "egregiously incorrect ". see link to the actual testimony below: https://bit.ly/2ZZzqAa Call from Barack Obama - Leslie Dach had contacted Barack Obama to ask him to give me a call to see what he could do to counter the slanderous lies there have been coming from the far right press, extreme right elements in society, and even several members of the Senate and the House. President Obama called me tonight at 5:00 PM on my cell phone and offered to help in any way that he can. He started off the conversation by saying that he was concerned about me and how I was holding up under this onslaught of slanderous lies. HE SAID THAT I WAS A "CIVILIAN" and that I should not have to put with this nonsense. He as a politician is used to this, but I have done nothing but serve that American public and the world for decades. He expressed concern that this would interfere with my important work on behalf of the American people. I explained to him what was going on and he was extremely sympathetic and in fact said that he would call up Ron Klain and or Jeff Zients to ask them to have the administration be proactive in countering these lies. I explained to him that President Biden as well as Ron Klain and Jeff Zients had been extremely helpful and supportive in making it very clear that they had complete confidence in me. In addition, I told him then Jen Psaki had continuously said at White House press conferences when asked whether the President would fire me that indeed the President would never fire me and that this was a bunch of nonsense. President Obama felt that we should do more than just claiming that they have my support and actually go on the offensive and call out people who are allowing this to be said and are not stepping up. President Obama said that he would call up Jeff Zients and tell him to mobilize some of the people in the administration to proactively go out and defend me. I told President Obama about the crazy things that the far-right Republicans were doing including the fact that Donald Trump, Jr. had on his website the sale of sweatshirts and T shirts to collect money for his campaign and on the T shirts and sweatshirts it said "Fauci kills puppies ". Obama said That Donald Trump junior is "A fucking moron". He apologized for using crude language but then went on to say that Donald Trump was a hopeless idiot who was a pathologic liar. He was very upset that none of the moderate Republicans were actually speaking out on my behalf and were distancing themselves from all of this terrible slanderous behavior against me. It was a great conversation that lasted for 25 minutes and he said that if he hears anything about movement in this direction he will get back to me. It indeed was an incredibly memorable phone call. Received the call late at night tonight from Albert Bourla, the chairman and CEO of Pfizer. He wanted to alert me that tomorrow morning they will announce extremely favorable results from their protease inhibitor + ritonavir (PAXLOVID). The results are truly striking. In a randomized , placebo controlled trial, the efficacy of this oral formulation was 89% if given within the first three days following symptoms and 85% efficacy if given within the first five days of symptoms. The group were people 18 years old and older with 1 or 2 risk factors such as smoking, diabetes, and hypertensions. There were no deaths in the treatment group and 10 deaths in the placebo group. Albert recognized that NI AID played a significant role in the early development of this drug. They will apply for anyway soon.
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November 5, 2021 - Global - 247,968,227/5,020,204; USA - 46,268,465/749,876 Phone call with Mikael Dolsten of Pfizer and his team. They explained to a group of us (USG) the details of the Pfizer drug trial results (See above) I continue to get hassled by people FOIA-ing my emails . For example today we got a request from a Robin Bravender of Insider (a trash publication) for my e-mails from Nov. 3, 2021 Another extraordinary Day !!! I attended the Funeral services of General Colin L Powell at the Washington National Cathedral at the invitation of the Powell family. Beautiful sunny crispy cool Fall day! It was truly a moving and extraordinary event characterized by moving speeches from Madeleine Albright, Richard Armitage, and General Powell's son Michael K. Powell. A notable part of the event was the extraordinary rendition of the song "How great thou are" by Wintley Phipps. The entire "A" list of present and former administrations including the President (Biden) and first lady, former Presidents Barack Obama and George W Bush, and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. I went over and chatted with all of them right before the ceremony. I thanked President Obama for our discussion the other night (see above), and I had a very interesting and amusing situation with Hillary Clinton. As soon as she saw me she opened up her arms and we gave each other a big warm hug. She whispered in my ear "now you know what it feels like "clearly referring to the issue with the emails and all the other flak that I am taking. I told her some details of what I was going through and she commiserated with me thoroughly. She also said that she wanted to give me a call very soon so we could get together. President Biden recognized me from across the room and gave me a nod and a finger point. On the wayout General Mark Milley came up to me put his arms around my shoulder and said "the only person who was getting his balls kicked more than me in Washington is you ". I responded by saying "no shit". he then responded by saying "Fuck 'em". I also ran into a number of other people from former administrations who chatted with me including James Baker, and Donna Shalala. I also met Ken Duberstein who is looking very frail and in a wheelchair. I didn't recognize him until the person who is taking care of him re-introduced us he said that he was the one who convinced Ronald Reagan to appoint me as director of NIAID and that I make him proud every single day particularly when he sees me out on TV doing my good work. BTW - It really is nice having a security detail to whisk you in and out of these events . It would have taken me forever to get in and I would have been locked in there forever. However, with Brett taking care of me it was as smooth as could be. PRESS: NPR "All Things Considered" with Mary Louise Kelly;
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Nov. 6, 2021 Dr. Anthony Fauci (1940 - ) 8) Lisa Schmid Fauci. Really piss of the Christian Right. Like - Reply « 1d Oso ar Dr. Fauci, the director of the National Institutes of Health, has come to the forefront of American life for his leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic. He should be canonized for not losing his mind during former president Trump's long, rambling and factually inaccurate COVID briefings in 2020. 'God' asked people who should be sainted next. Here are the top 20 most popular responses.
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Nov. 9, 2021 - Global - 249,743,428/5,047,652; USA - 46,541,113/753,564 Pfizer announced yesterday that they were going to ask the FDA to approve on an EUA boosters for everyone 18 years old and older. There is still concern on the part of Rochelle that the ACIP will not recommend boosters for everyone but would hold back on younger individuals particularly young men because of the risk of myocarditis. I have been pushing hard within the Medical Group as well as publicly saying that given the fact that we have plateaued on cases at around 70,000 per day and that we have already lost 750,000 Americans we should clearly boost everyone. Germany has already decided to boost every adult as has Israel. This is a situation where I am clearly at odds with the conservative approach of the ACIP Just a reminder of ongoing events - I have not been indicating this in my daily notes since they are ongoing activities but we are still are having anywhere from two to three White House press conferences per week as well as a weekly governors call inwhich I participate as well as a weekly briefing of the principles (cabinet members). For example, we had a very good conversation today with the governors about the recent approval of the Pfizer vaccine for children 5 to 11 years old and what this might ultimately mean both for the children as well As for the dynamics of the outbreak in this country. Larry Horowitz (Former staffer to Ted Kennedy) and confidante of Nancy Pelosi - Just to catch up on the note keeping , Larry has been very bullish about getting the Pfizer product to be used as a booster for all age groups. I agree with him strongly, but it is very clear that he has very close ties with Pfizer , in addition to his obvious strong relationship with Nancy Pelosi. Larry keeps texting me with all information about how other countries including Germany, Israel, uh and now Canada have decided to boost with Pfizer at all age groups. Of course the CDC and their ACIP may not be as enthusiastic given what I believe is an overly concerned attitude about myocarditis in the younger male age group. Today Pfizer has submitted their application to the FDA for an EUA for boosters for people 18 and over. Let us see how this turns out. Did another zoom call with Pastor Connie Miller of Maryland where I spoke to her with her parishioner children listening. I explained why it was important to get vaccinated and I told him that I would be going to the North Pole to vaccinate Santa Claus's young elves. Call from Larry Jameson, Executive Dean and Senior Vice-President of Penn Medicine - Larry called me today with a very interesting proposal of what I can do when I step down as director of NIAID. He would like me to consider assuming a named professorship at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. He said I could have offices in Washington DC in the Joe Biden center which is located in downtown DC and is part of the University of Pennsylvania. I could spend most of my time in Washington and intermittently visit Penn. This is likely the first of several offers at this type that I will get; however, this seems like exactly the kind of thing I would want to allow me to write my books , give lectures, and have a home base in a highly reputable institution. Town Hall with Congresswoman Anna Eshoo (D-CA) - I have been doing a number of town hall appearances with various Congress men and women over the last several months , almost all Democrats. I have not mentioned them in my notes for the most part however the one I did tonight with Anna who is special since she is such an avid fan of mine and effusively praised me throughout the town hall meeting. Her district is the San Mateo and Palo Alto area. Interestingly, that is where Joan Baez lives. We spoke about boosters, vaccinations in general, vaccine hesitancy, and what the end game is of getting back to normal in this pandemic. PRESS: Bloomberg TV with David Westin; NPR Radio interview with Joe Palca;
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2021-11-10 00:00
Anthony S. Fauci
Nov. 10, 2021 Global - 250,154,972/5,054,267; USA - 46,626,034/755,201 Many Eastern European countries by having record surges of COVID with increases in hospitalizations and deaths. These countries include the Ukraine, Romania, Russia, Bulgaria, among others. In the United states although the cases are plateauing as a group, there are other areas of the country particularly some of the western and northern states it is starting to see increases including the important state of California. In fact, the daily average over the past week for the country has shown a 5% increase in cases. Met by Zoom today with Eric Schultz at the request of Barack Obama - Eric was really very helpful. He has enormous experience at being a comms expert working with Barack Obama. He was involved in deflecting a lot of the criticism against Obama during his Presidency. Eric was very realistic about what can be done in my case although he admitted that the level of attacks against me was clerly organized and unprecendented. He wanted to find out what was being negatively impacted by all of this. I explained to him that it was a very strong strain on me but that I'm strong enough to withstand it and he seemed to resonate with that. I told him that my scientific staff seems to be able to do their job even though the onslaught of this is so clear to them and they feel badly about what I'm going through. I told him that the group that is getting most overwhelmed with this is my legislative and my communications staff. Eric felt that it would be very difficult to shame the right wing media and even the right wing members of Congress and the Senate, and so he is unsure whether going after them would make a difference. He wanted to know whether I needed more help at the staff level in communications and legislation. I don't think that we do need that but I referred him to Courtney Billet with whom he has already scheduled a meeting. He did say that he was interested in the Washington Post piece that will be written by Yasmeen Abutaleb. He feels that if we can galvanize other media people to call out these groups that are attacking me that this could be very helpful. Once you expose the people who are instigating this, they often are reluctant to continue. And so, I am waiting to see how is conversation with Courtney goes. I am very thankful to Barack Obama for helping to set up this meeting with Eric. Nice fireside chat with Bill First Bipartisan Center - The audience were a number of policy makers who listened in on the bipartisan senators discussions. Bill asked the usual questions ut the status of the outbreak but where we're going what does the end game look like and all the other questions that are generally asked. PRESS:Interview with "The Daily" - New York Times - Michael Barbaro;
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Nov. 11, 2021 Just to catch up on what is going on with the Moderna/NIH patent dispute. It has been very clear from the very beginning that there was a very strong collaboration between investigators at the Vaccine Research Center (VRC) and the Moderna company . In particular John Mascola , Barney Graham, and Kizzmekia Corbett were heavily involved in the development of the mRNA -1273 vaccine. It was assumed by everyone that there would be a joint patent inventorship. And so, when a few months ago we heard that there was some disagreement among the tech transfer and it has really pissed off Francis DOI: 10.1126/science.abn1244 people of the NIH and the lawyers at Moderna, Frances and I engaged in a couple of telephone conversations with Steve Hoge and Stephane Bancef of Moderna. Steve and Stephane said that the actual inventorship was solely Moderna and that although the NIH had rights to the patent and licensing of the S2P immunogen, Moderna claimed that the actual "inventorship" was theirs. This is critical since even though we would get a considerable amount of royalty from this technicality and even though we could be "co-owners" of the patent but not inventors of the patent this would still give Moderna complete control over who can or cannot use the mRNA vaccine . This is particularly relevant if we try to get the vaccine produced for low and middle income countries at a very, very low price. And so, after many attempts at resolving the issue we were very surprised that Moderna unilaterally went out and filed the patent and specifically and explicitly excluded John, Barney, and Kizzy. The entire academic community, when they found out about this, was totally taken aback. And so, just this week Francis made it clear in an interview with Reuters that we are going to bring Moderna to court and let the courts determined the outcome . See below. UPDATE 1-Moderna COVID-19 vaccine patent dispute headed to court, U.S. NIH head says
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Nov. 13, 2021- Global - 251,788,329/5,077,907; USA - 46,910,412/759,552 I had an important TV interview with Ted Koppel to be aired on CBS tomorrow (see below). The main gist of the interview was the attacks on me from the radical far-right. However, Ted did bring up an issue that Hugh Hewitt brought up in a different context (see above). Ted asked me (and he is a good friend) whether or not I realized that I was speaking to the converted and the 50% of people who love me are already doing what I want them to do and the 30% who hate me will never do what I say no matter what and so have I ever considered pulling out of being a public spokesperson and just focus on my job as the director of NIAID. He originally asked whether I should "step down" because I had to remind him that I do have a very important job that has nothing to do with speaking to the press. When he understood that, he corrected himself and said why not just pull back from interviews since I'm wasting my time. I pointed out to him that there are still people who are on the fence whom I can convince and since I am such a valued spokesperson and a good communicator that the President and the Administration want very much for me to be out there. He got that and agreed, but it is interesting that he even brought it up. I have been including Larry Corey in one of the three weekly division director meetings because in my opinion he is one of the most brilliant clinical trialists in the country if not the world. However there is some growing tension that the division directors, particularly Emily Erbelding and Carl Dieffenbach resent Larry being there since they feel he is giving himself an unfair advantage inventing his ideas in front of me and putting them in a position that they have to agree since everybody knows that he is a very close personal friend of mine. And so, at the last meeting they spoke to me about asking Larry not to take part in the division director meetings anymore since this in their mind is a conflict of interest. They do have a point but I believe that they do not fully appreciate how much value added he is. And so tonight I had to call Larry and tell him that he can continue to very frequently consult with me with his ideas but that he cannot attend the division director meetings by zoom anymore unless invited for a specific ad hoc issue. He was disappointed, and vented a bit about their lack of creativity , but he understood and will stand down on this. I will continue to use him frequently as an advisor. PRESS: Interview with Ted Koppel for CBS "Sunday Morning" to air tomorrow (Sunday)
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Nov. 14, 2021 The interview with Ted Koppel went extremely well and I got more emails and texts than ever saying how impressed people were with it. The tone of the interview was interesting in that he allowed me to talk about the divisiveness in the country and he even brought it up in a good context the fact that many people don't believe me anymore and even want me to resign. He asked my opinion about that and I was very firm in saying that I focus on my job and that I did not create the divisiveness in the country and certainly if people keep lying about me and distorting the truth in egregious ways, of course some people are going to believe that and some people are not going to like me but that's not what I'm all about. I'm all about doing my job and I'm not going anywhere until COVID-19 is in the rearview mirror. It is also interesting that with other things in the news including the contempt of Congress charges against Steve Bannon with other charges soon coming against mark meadows, the attention on me has lessened. Perhaps this is a temporary low but it certainly is noticeable.
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Nov. 15, 2021 - Global USA Went down to the White House today to participate with secretary Becerra - In a Health Summit for Indian Nation.I gave a brief overview of the outbreak and the importance of getting booster vaccinations and secretary Becerra and I answered a bunch of questions from different tribal leaders. Well down there I ran into Susan Rice who gave me a big hug as usual as well as Merrick Garland with whom I had a nice chat. He joked and said you've got to save us from this outbreak and I joked back and said you've got to save us from the crazies who are out there. He shook his head in affirmation and said he's trying. Over the weekend I had been back and forth on the phone with Larry Horowitz as well as Jeff Zientz. The issue at hand is that many of the states including Colorado, California, New Mexico, and soon Minnesota as well as a number of countries such as Canada Israel Germany France and others are all recommending that everyone 18 years of age and older get their third booster shot of an M RNA vaccine. The FDA is collecting the data from Pfizer to make the authorization through an EU A for that age group. We are hoping that the CDC does not hesitate no matter what the ACIP says and goes ahead and shows leadership to get everyone a booster shot. The reason why this is important , despite the fact that there was concern about myocarditis in younger men, is because the message of who should get boosted is ambiguous and even people who should be getting boosted are hesitant to do so because they are not sure whether they qualify for a boost. If you just say across the board that everybody who's received a primary vaccination should get boosted within six months, then there is clarity about the fact that everyone should get vaccinated. I have been respectful of the CDC and the process that they go through , but over the last couple of days I have been very explicit saying that in my professional opinion I feel that everyone should get vaccinated. Got a call from Ari Emanuel today - He told me that he will be coming to Washington DC in the next month and wants to come over the house for dinner to explain to me how naive I am and not fully appreciating just how much money I can get from book deals films and speeches. Ari has been calling me about once every several weeks to just check in on me and see how I am doing and to maintain the connection. He is very obviously hot to be my agent when I step down from the United States government. Business Insider PRESS: WTOP Radio with Gigi; Business Insider with Hillary Brueck (Print); CNBC with Shepherd Smith