Tony's Diary Package — page 1065

*****Truly an insane piece by Bob Redfield: Former CDC Director Robert Red PRESS: "Breaking Med" online interview with Michael Smith; Sept. 17, 2022 Chris and I had dinner over Ellen Sigal's home together with Diana DeGette and her husband Judge Lino Lipinsky. It was an interesting conversation and part of the discussion was the fact that the GOP will probably haul me before their oversight committees and make a spectacle of the Wuhan, gain of function situation. Diana is the current Chair of the Energy and Commerce oversight committee and if the GOP wins the House, she will be the ranking minority member. This is very good for me but it doesn't completely shield me from there attacks which I need to be prepared for that will come either in the House with Jim Jordan et al or in the Senate with Rand Paul et al. They will likely treat me like they treated Hillary Clinton during the Bengazi Hearings. Sept. 18, 2022 - Met John Podesta and Leslie Dach at an award ceremony for me at Georgetown Prep where Chris and I received the Pedro Arrupe, SJ award for Exemplary Public Service. They were both aware that I will be attacked by the GOP after the election and I will likely need legal assistance. John offered to put together a program to develop a fund to pay my legal bills. Sept. 19, 2022 I had to help clean up a bit of a mess today when the President casually said on a "60 Minutes" interview that the pandemic was over. I had a number of press today and certainly I got asked the question particularly on NPR about how this relates to the fact that all of us have been saying that we are still in the middle of a pandemic and 400 people are dying each day. I gave the explanation that it really is a matter of semantics and that the president was referring to the fact that the fulminant stage of the outbreak is no longer present since we were experiencing 800,000 cases a day and over 3000 deaths per day several months ago and the situation is very different now. However, I did emphasize that we are still in the middle of a pandemic. It is likely that there will be another wave of infections in November: Variant report 2022-09-14