Tony's Diary Package — page 727

00,000/575,500 00,000/576,200 May 5, 2021 - Global - 154,000,000/3,200,000; USA - 32,300,000/575,500 • Daily cases today at 41,000 In discussions with the medical team and with the White House comms group, I made it clear but I really do have a problem defending the ultra-conservative approach of the CDC regarding the wearing of masks outdoors. In particular, I was on an interview on the Today show with Savannah Guthrie and she pushed me on how inflexible the guidelines were for children in camp, where we have kids wearing masks all the time in 90 degree weather playing outside. I admitted that the CDC guidelines were "conservative". Savannah try to get me to say that they were excessive but I stuck with my original characterization. We really do need to get the CDC to loosen up on some of their guidelines because our credibility is going to be attacked if we do not do that. I had a very interesting conversation with Nancy Messonnier last night. I called her up to ask her advice about how we can get some clear metrics from the CDC regarding when cities in states could start relaxing their restrictions. She surprised me by telling me that she was no longer part of the COVID response group and that she has essentially been fired by Rochelle Walensky. Something strange is going on here since it is very difficult to fire anybody in government even when they do something awful , and certainly Nancy has not done anything awful. In fact, she even thought that maybe I was involved in her removal but was very pleased to see that I did not know anything about it. POTUS announced that the USA would waive the TRIPS and lift patent restrictions!!! PRESS: NBC "Today" with Savannah Guthrie; Israeli TV; MSNBC with Stephanie Ruhle; Met with the Politico Editorial Board (on the record); Interview with The Hill with Steve Clemons; Israeli Public broadcasting Corporation; Sky News Australian TV; May 6, 2021 - Global - 154,800,000/3,200,000; USA - 32,400,000/576,200 I had an important conversation this morning with Rochelle Walensky who wanted my input on putting together some specific metrics for when the country can open up and stop wearing masks. I have been encouraging her to do this over the past several weeks since many members of the press and the public have been pushing us to give some sort of a metric regarding the number of cases as well as the percent of the population that is vaccinated that can be used to allow states, cities, towns, and counties to know when they can open up and stop wearing masks. She showed me a bunch of slides which proposed a color-coded system County by County that would provide some form of metrics. She proposed that if a County gets to less than 50 cases per 100,000 population over seven days and has 70% of its population receiving at least one dose of the vaccine that this could be the metric for opening. I am very pleased to see that they are moving in this direction since this is what I have been encouraging them to do now for several weeks. I believe it would counter the intense criticism that the CDC and I are receiving because of a lack of definitive metrics.