Tony's Diary Package — page 938

Very Important Day!! - An extraordinary amount has been going on over the last 24 to 48 hours. It is very clear that with the Omicorn variant is rapidly spreading from the epicenter in South Africa with mostly travel-related cases to a number of countries at this point including Botswana, the Netherlands, England, Hong Kong, Australia, Italy, Israel, Belgium, Czech Republic, and several other countries. This is unquestionably a highly transmissible virus. We had a very productive zoom call at 12 noon Washington DC time with our South African colleagues once again. The main players among the South Africans were Tulio de Oliveira, Glenda Gray, and Carolyn Williamson. The have been extraordinarily transparent and helpfu giving us data in real time. It is a shame that we had to block travel from RSA. However, we would have gotten killed by the press if we did not as we are now getting killed for having done it. I expressed my deep gratitude to them for their help. The South Africans gave us a really good feel about the fact that there are things that we know and things that we don't know at this point. The combination of the many mutations in the spike protein together with the fact that they are seeing spikes in infection among people who have recovered from delta as well as those who have been vaccinated. The critical question is how severe is this disease that likely will result from this new infection. Immediately after the briefing with the South Africans, Jeff wanted me to come to the White House to help prepare the speech that the President will be making tomorrow about Omicorn. I spent a considerable amount of time in Jeff's office together with Natalie working on the presentation that I would be giving to the President this evening as well as the content of his upcoming speech tomorrow. After we worked on the presentation and his speech, we went to the Oval Office at around 3:30 PM and sat around the Resolute Desk. Briefing the President were Ron Klain, Jon Fine, Natalie, and Jeff. I gave a full briefing to the President about what the situation was with the new variant. In addition, we all sat around and edited with him the speech that he will deliver tomorrow at a White House press conference. At the end of the briefing, Ron and Jeff strongly suggested and the President agreed that I should be at the press conference with him tomorrow morning at 11:00 AM to answer any of the scientifically related questions. The President was very much in favor of this. I was a little bit concerned because I did not want it to appear that we were pushing out the surgeon general (Vivek) and the CDC director (Rochelle). BTW, both of them were not in DC (Miami and Atlanta). However, Jeff and Ron were very adamant that it be me alone since they did not want there to be any confusion about who would answer which question. One of the things that I noticed that was very clear is that the President appeared extremely tired and very muted and low key. I'm beginning to see that this is his style . However, when we got to the question and answer. He asked all the right questions. And so I can understand why his critics can often refer to him as "Sleepy Joe" when in fact he really is paying attention and is very measured in his responses. In addition, he speaks in a very low monotone which makes it appear almost that he is frail when he is not. After the briefing I rushed home and joined the Sunday night call with the COVID medical team led by Jeff. Tomorrow will be a big day. We are hearing a lot of pushback from people who are saying we should not have blocked travel from southern African countries. They fail to understand that we are not trying to completely prevent the influx of infection. Rather, we want