Tony's Diary Package — page 914

responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic. Chairperson Patty Murray was extremely helpful in allowing me to counter his ranting lies . I closed the session by saying then I have a great deal of respect for the institution of the United States Senate, but in fact everything he said was "egregiously incorrect ". see link to the actual testimony below: https://bit.ly/2ZZzqAa Call from Barack Obama - Leslie Dach had contacted Barack Obama to ask him to give me a call to see what he could do to counter the slanderous lies there have been coming from the far right press, extreme right elements in society, and even several members of the Senate and the House. President Obama called me tonight at 5:00 PM on my cell phone and offered to help in any way that he can. He started off the conversation by saying that he was concerned about me and how I was holding up under this onslaught of slanderous lies. HE SAID THAT I WAS A "CIVILIAN" and that I should not have to put with this nonsense. He as a politician is used to this, but I have done nothing but serve that American public and the world for decades. He expressed concern that this would interfere with my important work on behalf of the American people. I explained to him what was going on and he was extremely sympathetic and in fact said that he would call up Ron Klain and or Jeff Zients to ask them to have the administration be proactive in countering these lies. I explained to him that President Biden as well as Ron Klain and Jeff Zients had been extremely helpful and supportive in making it very clear that they had complete confidence in me. In addition, I told him then Jen Psaki had continuously said at White House press conferences when asked whether the President would fire me that indeed the President would never fire me and that this was a bunch of nonsense. President Obama felt that we should do more than just claiming that they have my support and actually go on the offensive and call out people who are allowing this to be said and are not stepping up. President Obama said that he would call up Jeff Zients and tell him to mobilize some of the people in the administration to proactively go out and defend me. I told President Obama about the crazy things that the far-right Republicans were doing including the fact that Donald Trump, Jr. had on his website the sale of sweatshirts and T shirts to collect money for his campaign and on the T shirts and sweatshirts it said "Fauci kills puppies ". Obama said That Donald Trump junior is "A fucking moron". He apologized for using crude language but then went on to say that Donald Trump was a hopeless idiot who was a pathologic liar. He was very upset that none of the moderate Republicans were actually speaking out on my behalf and were distancing themselves from all of this terrible slanderous behavior against me. It was a great conversation that lasted for 25 minutes and he said that if he hears anything about movement in this direction he will get back to me. It indeed was an incredibly memorable phone call. Received the call late at night tonight from Albert Bourla, the chairman and CEO of Pfizer. He wanted to alert me that tomorrow morning they will announce extremely favorable results from their protease inhibitor + ritonavir (PAXLOVID). The results are truly striking. In a randomized , placebo controlled trial, the efficacy of this oral formulation was 89% if given within the first three days following symptoms and 85% efficacy if given within the first five days of symptoms. The group were people 18 years old and older with 1 or 2 risk factors such as smoking, diabetes, and hypertensions. There were no deaths in the treatment