Diary Prequel Package — page 418

Susan Rice, Denis McDonough, Ron Klain, Sylvia Burwell, Chairman, Joint Chiefs Martin Dempsey, Tom Frieden by teleconference from Atlanta, Samantha Powers by teleconference from NYC - UN, Assistant Secretary Heather Higginbottom from State, Nancy Lindborg from USAID, Raj Shah - USAID. Ron Klain asked me to review for the POTUS the status of the vaccine plans as well as to explain the situation with the VSV adverse event of arthritis (see above). POTUS asked a few other questions of me. He referred a few times to his trip to NIH. Good meeting Did WTOP today December 12 - 14, 2014 - Cliff Lane has now gone to Liberia for the fourth time in order to set the stage for the upcoming randomized, placebo controlled, double-blind, clinical trial for the GSK/NIAID and the VSV vaccines. We are still getting nefarious comments and undermining of our efforts by the people from the UK, particularly Jeremy Farrar and Adrian Hill among others. They continue to inappropriately talk about the inadequacy of our vaccine efforts even though they are working with the same vaccine. It is unbelievable to me how nefarious they can be when the main goal should be to develop a vaccine to save the lives of so many unfortunate people in the West African countries. Nonetheless we will forge on and hopefully prove the safety and efficacy of this vaccine. December 15, 2014 - traveled to George Washington University to give a lecture for Bopper Deyton's course given at the Marvin Center at GW. It was an inspiring crowd of first-year medical students who were very excited to hear from me about the history of HIV and my involvement in it. That afternoon I participated by teleconference in an Ebola meeting that took place at the IOM sponsored dually by the IOM and the Rockefeller Foundation. The meeting was chaired by Secretary-General of the WHO, Dr. Margaret Chan. Many players were there in person or by phone including Paul Farmer from Liberia, as well as several Liberian and Sierra Leoneon and Guinean health officials. I presented the efforts in the development of vaccines and therapeutics December 16, 2014. Participated in a panel discussion on Ebola vaccines and therapeutics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) at 1616 Rhode Island Ave. NW. The panel was chaired by Steve Morrison. Other panelists included Julie Gerberding of Moncef Slaoui of GSK, Johan Von Hoof (Janssen and J & J), and Rohit Malpani (MSF). Good discussion about response to the epidemic. December 17, 2014 - Feature article about me including a picture on the Federal Page of the Washington Post. I gave credit in the article to many of the people involved in Ebola effort. It is noteworthy that although I saved Tom Friedman's job by convincing Sylvia Burwell not to fire him during the missteps by the CDC, Time magazine included Tom Friedman as one of the Persons of the Year in their "Ebola Fighters" issue. They did not even mention my name once. Years ago - Time did the same thing with making David Ho "Man of the Year" and now this. Such is life... December 19, 2014 - The puzzle of why Adrian Hill (and Jeremy Farrar) have been badmouthing the NIH/GSK approach of a high dose prime without the necessity of a boost.