Tony's Diary Package — page 837

border immune diseases. I have been explicit about that and have also been pushing the CDC to give us at least some preliminary data on the cohort studies that they say will inform us about the durability of protection among various groups of people. Other countries including France, Israel, and Germany, have decided to give boosts to the elderly right now. The UK has decided that they will start doing this in September. In this context, Jeff is getting very disillusioned with Rochelle and the CDC in their traditional way of not giving anyone even a slight hint of what the data shows until they are ready to announce it officially. A typical example of this has occurred today. I will be on a lot of press calls today and over the weekend and the CDC just announced that they have an MMWR that will be coming out together with a couple of papers in JAMA. I have no idea what is in these publications. This is unacceptable . Similar to what Sylvia burwell discuss with me years ago about firing Tom Frieden, Jeff is seriously thinking about either bringing in someone else to assist Rochelle or outright getting rid of her. I have argued that we should absolutely not fire her, and I have offered to speak with her about this issue. I had a long call with Rochelle tonight and explained the entire situation to her. I confirmed that I totally support her, but she really has to address the ingrained and somewhat ossified culture of the CDC. I particularly pointed out to her that she just cannot hold back information from Jeff and the White House team because she is waiting for her team to finalize data. If she has preliminary data she needs to tell us about it since we may need to talk about policy that would depend on such data. She just cannot give us an MMWR on the same day that is coming out. The last time this happened she said she could not give it to us because it was "under embargo ". I pointed out to her that this enraged Jeff since the CDC owns MMWR and as director of CDC she needs to realize that no one is trying to influence what goes into MMWR but it is important that she does not surprise Jeff or the president with something that she knows and that we do not know. I love Rochelle and she knows that. I explained to her what she needs to do to make things right with Jeff . A human explained to her the story from years ago when I saved Tom Frieden from getting fired by Sylvia Burwell because of how he messed up the ebola situation as a result of his listening to "his guys ". I believe that Rochelle gets it and will survive this very difficult time. I support her totally. PRESS: WJXX -Jacksonville TV; Bloomberg TV interview - Madison Mills; 1 hour with USA Today Editorial Board; Zoom Call with Michael Spector for his adio-book; MSNBC peacock TV with Joshua Johnson August 7, 2021 The surge continues: