Diary Prequel Package — page 232

Mar. 29, 2010 - Continue with the Monday evening weekly meetings with Heidi Avery at the WH Sit. Room. Usual suspects. Still Heidi pushing and everyone but me pushing back. Peggy Hamburg seems her usual spacey self often not even having read the documents that Heidi distributes for comment. Jesse Goodman (wonderful guy) continues to be reserved and cautious in typical FDA fashion, but cannot articulate well. Nicki Lurie is a good person, but over her head. In fairness to her, she is caught between a rock and a hard place in trying not to let this get ahead of the Secretary who in my mind is distracted or does not really care about this. Nicki keeps pushing back on Heidi's "transforming initiative". Zeke Emanuel comes to most of the meetings and is with Heidi and me in wanting to push this. In typical Zeke fashion, he is brilliant, but shoots often from the hip. Mike Kurilla is doing a great job with me and probably understands the proposed process better than anyone in the room. Andy Weber of DoD (assistant Secretary) is a good guy, but he is just trying to keep the DoD in the "game" Mar. 31, 2010 - Meet with Alan Bernstein (Executive Director of the "Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise" (see above comments about my negative reaction to this unnecessary group). Alan is a good guy, but is heading a superfluous organization. In any event, his multiple layers of "working Groups" has come up with a Strategic plan for the "Enterprise". Peggy Johnston is all over this and so she shields me from the week-byweek dealings of this organization (I am one of the Founding Council Funders). Meeting in my office with Alan since wants me very much to approve of the plan since NIAID is the major world funder of HIV vaccine research. Meeting In NYC next week of the Enterprise Council and so he is here to pay respects and make sure that I am on board. The Plan is OK, but NIAID will do what we think is best for vaccine development. Later in the day, the HHS Flu team (me, Nicki Lurie, Jesse Goodman, Peggy Hamburg, Tom Frieden, Laura Petrou, Jenny Backus, etc) meets with Sebelius in her private conference room. We present the supposedly penultimate draft of the MCM Review that she ordered and that we have been working on for weeks trying to reconcile it with Heidi's initiative. Nicki gives a terrible presentation; Sebelius is confused as to the "scope" of the review that she ordered - was it a review only of medical countermeasure (MCM) development or a review of end-to-end process of responsdng to health crises, including flu. I tried to clarify for Nicki, and Sebelius agreed with me. We need to keep it focused. Back to the drawing board on a few issues. One issue is how much money should we ask for in the 2010 flu supplement and the 2011 budget to fulfill some of the gaps identified in the review and in what is proposed by Heidi. April 5, 2010 - After Action Review of the H1N1 response in Nicki and Jesse's home in Bethesda (near the Palisades section). Beautiful home with magnificent view of the Potomac and the opposite Virginia shore. Beautiful sunny day. Present - Nicki, Jesse, Robin, Steve Redd, Anne Schuchat, Laura Petrou, Makala Ross (OS). Good discussions. April 6-7, 2010 - Went to NYC night before and had great dinner and time with Jenny and Meg. I stayed at "W" hotel at Union Square. Went for run on April 5 evening past Larry Kramer's Apartment; called, but found out later that he was asleep on his couch and did not hear the phone. In front of Larry's Apt. (2 Fifth Avenue - right across the