Tony's Diary Package — page 852

37,100,000/62 1,300 doing what we feel is right. I finally got him to listen to me and I had him change some wording in the president's speech for tomorrow that would add a degree of flexibility to the fact that we will ultimately get done what we want to do but that we would tip our hat to the recommendations of the acip. After it was all over and at 10:15 PM Jeff called me up again to see what my thoughts were. He had changed the POTUS comments to include the caveat that the details are dependent on FDA approval and recommendations from the CDC's advisors. He was considerably calmed down and I went step by step with him and told him that we likely will be able to pull this off and get it right without having the rest of the world think we were railroading the acip which really was not what we wanted to do. He seemed OK with that. At the end of the day, after the BLA, people and physicians will boost whoever they want to boos whenever they want to. PRESS: PBS South Florida TV; National Association of Black Journalists - Interview of me and Cameron Webb by Dr. Ian Smith (Physician/journalist/author) August 18, 2021 - Global - 208,500,000/4,400,000; USA - 37,100,000/621,300 Yesterday 180,000 cases. 7 day daily average >100,000 Had a very eventful and stressful day today; however things worked out well with the rollout of the booster plan at the White House press conference. Following that I briefed the president and VP in the Oval Office together with Vivek, Jeff, Rochelle, Berchara, and Marcella, and Natalie. Only Vivek and I in person. The president and vice president asked good questions , particularly with regard to the president's concern that this is contingent upon FDA and acip recommendations . He picked up right away on the concern that Jeff had that we needed to do this and make sure that we don't have a stumbling block with the FDA and acip. The one issue that could arise is that the FDA may feel that the risk benefit ratio of boosting young kids 18 years old and there abouts may not be favorable in the context of the risk of myocarditis balanced against the risk of their winding up in the hospital as a result of COVID. The president is having a bad few days given what is going on in Afghanistan with the Taliban having taken over the country in just a couple of days following withdrawal of USA troops. As expected the response to the rollout of the booster plan was very mixed, and quite understandably. The CDC messaging all along has been dysfunctional . I do not think that this is the fault of Rochelle, but just the function of the culture at CDC where they hang on to data without letting anybody know about it until it's ready to be published. We had another instance where Rochelle was very reticent to show any of the medical team what was in the upcoming MMWRs that actually impact greatly the booster roll out because in typical fashion it was "embargoed ". One cannot imagine how ridiculous this is that a public health agency is acting like an academic department in a Medical Center where the most important thing is publishing data as opposed to guiding public health decisions. I take this opportunity now to talk about it , but this has been a chronic problem literally for the decades that I have been the