Diary Prequel Package — page 303

his AM to talk Jan. 9, 2013 - Appeared on C-SPAN (TV) and on WTOP radio early this AM to talk about the erupting influenza epidemic. Jan. 9, 2013 - Attended an important dinner at the home of John Monahan and his wife Annie at 3340 - Runneymede Place, N.W., Washington, D.C. to discuss the relationship between PEPFAR and USAID with regard to the new Office of Global Health Diplomacy. John formerly worked in the Clinton Administration and for the past 4 years has been Counselor to Secretary Sebelius in HHS and Acting Director of the Office of Global Health Affairs at HHS. He recently moved to the State Department to help with the Global Health issues there. Hillary Clinton had just established this Office of Global Health Diplomacy and made Eric Goosby (Director of PEPFAR) the Director of the Office with Ambassador Louise Rowe as Deputy. Apparently Raj Shah and the USAID are trying to take control over this new initiative that has just been put out by the Obama administration. Raj has been trying to take over PEPFAR for some time now without success. I have been backing Eric Goosby from the very beginning since I believe that Raj is driven by ambition on the background of a terrible track record of USAID. In the second Obama administration the people in the State Department and in the White House are trying to create a legacy for Pres. Obama with regard to global health. They believe that this new office of Global Health Diplomacy could be the vehicle to do that. Right now it appears that we are engaged in the struggle Raj Shah and USAID wanting to take over the process. The dinner included a number of people with knowledge in the field. Participants included John Montague his wife Annie, Francis Collins, Tom Frieden, Peggy Hamburg, a woman from the State Department (Laurie) who worked in the Clinton Administration, Nils Daulaire, and a number of other people. The plan discussed at the meeting was to help support Eric Goosby is trying to make the office of global health diplomacy a productive and viable enterprise and to ward off any attempts on the part of USAID to take it PEPFAR and the new office. Tomorrow I will go to the State Department for the first of the number of meetings that will address this issue. More to follow on this subject. Jan. 10, 2013 - Did CNN Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer regarding the Flu outbreak. I made casual statement in response to a question by Wolf that the outbreak had passed the epidemic threshold (which was true (7.3% with threshold at 7.2%). Anderson Cooper later on in his CNN show "Anderson Cooper 360" made announcement that NIH Official Dr. Anthony Fauci has now declared the influenza outbreak "an epidemic". The CDC was coming out with their weekly report with a big press briefing the following day (tomorrow) and this must have gotten them pissed with their usual jealousy of my being on TV and the media in issues that they think they own. Jan. 11, 2103 - Did morning CNN and Soledad O'Brien on CNN and further discussed the flu situation. Much, much press interest. As expected, Bill Hall (HHS Press office) wrote a note to Courtney Billet, Greg Folkers and John Burklow saying that from now on the CDC should handle press on the flu and I should only do local media and national media only when they want to talk about research associated with flu like universal flu vaccine. This has shades of Jenny Backus. Almost certainly a result of a complaint from CDC. We (NIH/NIAID) are trying not to clash with them, but this is really