Diary Prequel Package — page 457

whom I did my first research project in the summer between my 1st and 2nd year at Cornell - the summer that I met Lynne Williams. June 2, 2015 - Spoke with Doug brooks (ONAP) about setting up a meeting with him, me, Valeria Jarrett and Denis McDonough to discuss possibility of starting a PEPFAER for the USA to end the AIDS pandemic here. June 3, 2015 - Chris and I went to function in the Mansfield Room of the US capitol as gusts of Wayne and Catherine Reynolds in one of their usual wonderful social events. They were honoring Congresswoman Debbie Dingel, Sens. Roy Blount, Thad Cochrane and Diane Feinstein for their contribution to the Arts. I introduced Debbie Dingel. Great crowd. I chatted with old friends Fred Hiatt of Washington Post, Rick Atkinson, Chris Matthews, Bob Barnett, etc. Great evening. June 5, 2015 - Things heating up with MERS in South Korea. Now at 40 cases and 4 deaths - largest outbreak outside of the Arabian Penisula. Index case is a 68 year Korean man who travelled in the Arabian Penisula (KSA, Qatar, UAE, etc) came back to Korea was hospitalized and set off a chain of infections among people in same room and even on same ward as well as family members and HCWs. I appeared on Wolf Blitzer (CNN) to discuss the situation. June 6, 2015 - Steve Holland admitted a patient (25 year old woman from India) with XDR TB today. NSC heard about it and as usual pushed the panic button and wanted us to provide a press statement and Qs and As. We did and this triggered much press interest. June 8, 2015 - Did my BSC presentations or LIR Overview and Immunopathogenesis Section accomplishments. My primary reviewers were Arturo Casadevall and Larry Corey. Review went extremely well. Press interest now heating up for both MERS and the XDR patient here at NIH. Did interview with Katty Kay for BBC on MERS. June 9, 2015 = Did WTOP interview on MERS and XDR TB. Also, for XDR TB did MSNBC with Andrea Mitchell, NBC Nightly News, CBS Nightly News and Telemundo TV, Channel 8 News, ABC Nightly News Harold Varmus came back to Bethesda and visited with me. He is doing fine at WeillCornell. Came down for a dinner with Francis Collins, Shirley Tilghman, Marc Kirschner, and Ron Daniels to discuss the systemic problems with the biomedical research enterprise related to the paper that Harold, bruce Alberts, Kirschner and Tilghman wrote in PNAS.