Tony's Diary Package — page 904

care as he could have gotten anywhere in the country or the world. It was merely an example of an 83 year old man with an underlying malignancy , in this case multiple myeloma, together with Parkinson's disease, chemotherapy for his multiple myeloma , as well as underlying cardiovascular disease and hypertension. He was given superb care and yet he still succumbed. He had been vaccinated with the Pfizer product back in February but because of scheduling and other problems, he never received a 3rd booster dose which he should have gotten given his immune compromised state. Bottom line is that I do not think anything could have been done differently. Doctor Blaylock indicated to me that they are already receiving a lot of negative social media by anti-vaxxers who are now saying that was vaccinated but he still died; therefore, people should not get vaccinated. Typical anti-vaccine nonsense. Had a very productive conversation with my UK colleague Chris Whitty. There has been some recent reports a mini-surge in cases in the UK. The UK is considerably under vaccinating children compared to the United States. In addition, they do not require that children wear masks in school. Chris mentioned that the surge is among children and that for the first time we are seeing transmission from the children who are infected in school to their parents and relatives within the household. This is very different from prior assumptions that children do not transmit infection to adults. Chris thinks that this was true with the alpha variant which was not particularly transmissible. However, he feels that with the delta variant and its high degree of transmissibility that this is what we are now seeing. He gave us a heads up because the UK is usually about a month ahead of us in the dynamics of the outbreak. We may not be seeing this type of a surge since we are pushing very hard to vaccinate children. In fact, next week the FDA will look at the data from Pfizer on vaccinating children from 5 to 11 years old. One other point with the UK is that they are not enthusiastic about mandating vaccination even though they are doing well with having vaccinated about 85% of their population with at least one dose. Oct. 19, 2021 - Global - 241.000,000/4,900,000; USA - 45,000,000/726,000 Interesting zoom with White House protocol staff today arranged by Jeff. The purpose of the meeting was to get my input about how to restrict or not events and visitors to the White House moving forward . This is particularly relevant as we approach the holiday season and the protocol people have to make decisions regarding holiday receptions, state dinners and tours of the White House. It was an interesting discussion in which they relied on my judgment as to how restrictive they should be regarding the size of the crowd, the requirement of testing, and the requirement of vaccination. I have received a lot of honors over the last year and a half from a number of prestigious organizations . Unfortunately there are so many of these that it is very difficult to fully appreciate them as they all seemed to pile up in a very intense time frame. However, last night I received one that was particularly nice . It was the History Maker Medal from the New York Historical Society which was associated with the fireside chat between me and my good friend David Rubenstein. As a special treat they had the Regis High School jazz ensemble play music in the background in my honor Oct. 20, 2021 - Global - 241,000,000/4,900,000; USA - 45,000,000/728,000