Tony's Diary Package — page 1023

Cumulative confirmed COVID-i9 deaths per million people ores Due to varying protocols and challenges in the attribution of the cause of death, the number of confirmed deaths may not accurately represent the true number of deaths caused by COVID-19, 3,000 United States 2,900 2,000 1,500 Israel Canada 1,000 World S00 Australia New Zealand Japan ------------ -------- Mar 1, 2020 Feb 24, 2021 sep 12, 2021 Aug 14, 2022 Source: Johns Hopkons University CSSE COVID-19 Data CC BY PRESS: The Shade Room (Online streaming); The Grio TV; August 16, 2022 I had a very important and moving conversation with Ron Klain in his West Wing Office today at 11:45 AM (bright, sunny, mild day). I announced to Ron that I would be stepping down from all of my positions including chief medical advisor to the President. I will make the announcement next week and my date for stepping down will be sometime in December of this year. One of the concerns that Jeff Zients and I had would be that Ron would want to push back on my leaving giving all the trouble that he's having with the CDC. However, he somewhat surprised me by saying that his instinct would be to push strongly to convince me not to leave, given that he considers me "one of the most important public servants in the history of the country" given that I have saved millions of lives over the last several years. He would be almost embarrassed trying to convince me to change my mind about something that I obviously have thought about for some time and that I thoroughly deserve. He went on to say so many nice things that I was embarrassed. He said that he considered it a major privilege in his life to have had the opportunity to work with me both during the Obama administration with Ebola and now with COVID and monkey pox. He said that he would arrange tomorrow for me to either see the president if the president comes to the White House tomorrow; if he does not come to the White House then arrange