Tony's Diary Package — page 576

,700,000/352,000 PRESS: Did zoom interview with the Newsday Editorial Board; MSNBC "All In" with Chris Hayes January 5, 2021 - Global - 84,200,000/1,800,000 USA - 20,700,000/352,000 Deb's notes: Made this shorter to make serious points. First and foremost our Fall surge slope is nearly identical to the UK slope suggesting we have had our own more transmissible strain since then and it was responsible for the Fall surge in the Northern Plain states. My concern then was this type of surge moving into the more populous states as it has now in CA and now Tx and the sunbelt is unstable as well as the midAtlantic and NorthEast. Viruses are always in search of escape mutants than are more transmissible yet preserving replication capacity. This is happening around the globe and the immunologic pressure on viruses drive this potential and we continue to increase the immunologic pressure through percent of population infected, use of plasma and monoclonal Ab and now immunization. Key to RNA viruses with this of high mutation potential is to rapidly immunize the population especially those most likely to have high replication potential - those over 65. We have to accelerate the immunization of those over 65 ASAP. We can't hold back on the rest of Tier 1 awaiting 1a. We have been in 1a for a month without adequate progress. Deb