Tony's Diary Package — page 321

PRESS: Shit show about CDC guidelines changing and Brett Giroir saying that I approved them (see above) August 27,2020 - • I wrote an email to Brett trying to make peace: -----Original Message----- From: Fauci, Anthony (NIH/NIAID) [E] <afauci@niaid.nih.gov> Sent: Thursday, August 27, 2020 6:31 AM To: Birx, Deborah (nsc.eop.gov) <Deborah.L.Birx@nsc.eop.gov>; Giroir, Brett (HHS/OASH) <Brett.Giroir@hhs.gov> Cc: Redfield, Robert R. (CDC/OD) <olx1@cdc.gov> Subject: RE: Testing Brett: I am sorry that there was so much press seemingly pitting you against me regarding approval or not of the changes in the CDC guidelines. I want to make something clear from my perspective and hopefully we can move on as good colleagues. According to the press reporting, you stated that the guideline change was "approved" by the task Force including and specifically by me. If what we did was the process for "officially approving" as important a document as the CDC guidelines, then the process is clearly flawed. There was no official "group discussion" at any meetings that I was at. The document was passed around to us individually before or after a TF meeting and indeed I did quickly look at it. I considered the document as a done deal that would not change no matter what we said. To your credit, you did make one minor change that I suggested. Importantly, had I appreciated that Deb, the Task Force Coordinator, had such a real problem with it (see her e-mail below), I would have looked at it much more carefully and discussed her concerns with her in detail, and re-read it in that context. I understand from Deb that a discussion did occur at the Aug 20 meeting (see below) when I was out being operated on at GWU hospital. Upon careful examination of the document now, I see why the community is up in arms about it since that change can and is being interpreted by many as indicating that we do not believe that asymptomatic spread and thus