Sunday, October 26, 2014

Today I did all five of the Sunday morning TV shows. As indicated above this is referred to as the "Full Ginsburg" related to the fact Ginsburg, the lawyer/family friend for Monica Lewinsky at the time that she blew the whistle on President Clinton related to the now famous sex scandal appeared on all 5 Sunday TV shows. I did this last week. Since I had done a "Full Ginsburg" last week several of the producers of the TV shows told me that this is the first time in their memory that any individual has done all five TV shows for two weeks in a row. And so they are now referring to this as a "Full Fauci". The shows went very well; however, it became clear that I was at odds with what Gov. Christie and Gov. Cuomo had done two days ago by initiating a full quarantine for flights into New Jersey and New York. On each of the shows I articulated two fundamental principles: 1) the safety of the American people comes first and is the major goal; 2) all of our policy decisions relating monitoring movement and restrictions should be based on sound scientific principles and scientific evidence. I reiterated that all scientific data show that a person who is without symptoms does not transmit Ebola and that one must come into contact with bodily fluids of a person who is sick with Ebola in order to contract people. Therefore, the principles leading to a broad general quarantine for returning health care workers is deeply flawed. Immediately following the shows, other shows and blogs and tweets pitted me against Christie and Cuomo. In my discussions on the five TV shows, I did not criticize them. I mentioned that I understood why they may feel that this is the best way to go; however, I mentioned that if they had asked my advice I would have told them not to institute a broad sweeping quarantine. I am being praised by people who are standing up for scientific evidence and data and I'm getting hate mail from people who feel I am trying to protect Obama. I am listing below cuts and pastes from a couple of representative e-mails that I have received: ----------------------------------------------------- From: M G <libssuckitraw@yahoo.com> Doctor, As you parrot the bullshit that came out of The Obomination, it makes you sound like a moron. No quarantining these infected boobs because it might hamper them volunteering? Are you fucking serious? Do you KNOW how STUPID that sounded? Yeah, we should just let them walk around, coughing, spewing,. sweating, touching other people until we have a serious Ebola outbreak in the USA! If pray that if Ebola DOES break out in the USA that somehow it only attacks dumbass liberals like you and removes you from your misery. Idiot. No wonder you're a member of Ovomit's Kakistocracy. ------------------------------------------------------------------ From: Unarmed Civilian <wes_t-one1@outlook.com> Where did you get your degree from North Korea? You love Africa and Ebola so much you go there. And don't come back. NO QUARANTINES....its the answer you'd expect from a government agency whose greatest accomplishments are in the areas of corruption and incompetence. Does half of America have to come down with Ebola and be standing there bleeding from there eyes before the EXPERTS know they are wrong. Fuck you and Fuck your Opinions. Go take your expertise somewhere else. LD ----------------------------------------------------------------------- It is really rather disturbing that people feel so strongly about this, with all the undertones of racism and what clearly is Hate for president Obama. During the times between shows, I exchanged e-mails with checking on how she was doing. Below are some of those e-mails: From Sunday, 26 Oct., 2014 at 10:41 AM: I just saw you on Meet the Press! You did so great :) I will definitely keep you posted with everything. Following the five TV shows I was invited to a meeting in the Situation Room with President Obama and senior cabinet officials and other staff. The attendees at the meeting were: From: Esquivel, Hilda V. [<mailto:Hilda_V._Esquivel@nsc.eop.gov>] Sent: Saturday, October 25, 2014 03:58 PM To: DL-NSS_ExecSec_Coordination <DL-NSS_ExecSec_Coordination@nsc.eop.gov <mailto:DL-NSS_ExecSec_Coordination@nsc.eop.gov>> Subject: INVITATION: HSC Meeting on SUNDAY, 10/26, 12:30 - 1:30 p.m. A Homeland Security Council meeting on Ebola Response with the President has been scheduled for Sunday, October 26, 2014, from 12:30 - 1:30 p.m. in the White House Situation Room. The following are invited to attend. Please confirm attendance to DL- NSS_ExecSec_Coordination@nss.eop.gov <mailto:DL- NSS_ExecSec_Coordination@nss.eop.gov> as soon as possible. If you have any questions, you may reach our office at (202) 456-9461. Thank you. • The Vice President • John Kerry, Secretary of State • Jack Lew, Secretary of the Treasury • Chuck Hagel, Secretary of Defense • Eric Holder, Attorney General • Sylvia Burwell, Secretary of Health and Human Service +1 (Leslie Dach, Senior Counselor) +CDC: Thomas Frieden, Director of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention +NIH: Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease • Jeh Johnson, Secretary of Homeland Secretary • Denis McDonough, Assistant to the President and Chief of Staff • Shaun Donovan, Director of the Office of Management and Budget • Amb. Samantha Power, Representative of the United States of America to the United Nations • Valerie Jarrett, Senior Advisor and Assistant to the President for Intergovernmental Affairs and Public Engagement • John Podesta, Counselor to the President • Susan Rice, Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs • Neil Eggleston, Assistant to the President and Counsel to the President • John Holdren, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology and Director of Science and Technology Policy • Antony Blinken, Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor • Lisa Monaco, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism • Benjamin Rhodes, Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications and Speechwriting • Katie Fallon, Assistant to the President and Director of the Office of Legislative Affairs • Jennifer Palmieri, Assistant to the President and Director of Communications • Rajiv Shah, Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development • Suzanne George, Deputy Assistant to the President and Executive Secretary and Chief of Staff of the National Security Council • Rand Beers, Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy Homeland Security Advisor • Ron Klain, Ebola Response Coordinator • Amy Pope, Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Energy and Climate Change • Gayle Smith, Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Development and Democracy • Caroline Tess, Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Legislative Affairs • Corey Gruber, Senior Director for Preparedness Policy • Edward ‘Ned” Price, Assistant Press Secretary for National Security Affairs • Larry Kerr, Director for Medical Preparedness and Policy Rajiv Shah, Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development The discussion centered around developing a policy of direct, active monitoring to preserve the scientific principles as well as to avoid the issue of a broad quarantine that had been initiated by Christie and Cuomo as indicated above. There was a two and one half-hour discussion at a meeting that was supposed to take one hour. When the President first came in he appeared extremely tired and somewhat detached. However, he quickly perked up and got involved in discussion. There was some disagreement around the room with Jeh Johnson of DHS feeling uncomfortable with just a direct, active monitoring since he felt that there would soon be many more healthcare workers entering the country and the social issues of public fear and concern would not be satisfied by just a direct active monitoring. Chuck Hagel has already indicated that returning military personnel from West Africa would be confined to barracks for 21 days following return from West Africa. However this is a much different story than civilians since military have the capability of easily confining personnel to barracks and providing them with all the necessary comforts and not demeaning them or stigmatizing them. I articulated several times, and the P resident referred to me and asked me questions multiple times regarding my recommendation that a direct active monitoring guided by matching the stratified risk experienced by the healthcare worker to a stratified stringency of restriction we could functionally accomplish the same thing as a broad quarantine for everyone. The president agreed mostly with what I said but he felt we should go a little bit further and encourage the healthcare workers to restrict themselves to some degree even if technically they were cleared to move around. Samantha Power was connected to the meeting by teleconference from Guinea where she had just landed. She mentioned that the West Africans there were very concerned about a possible quarantine. We had been with her the day before at the prior PC meeting. Again, Tom Frieden was relatively reserved during the discussion; however, it was tough since he was connected by teleconference. The final decision which has not yet been implemented since it awaits a document from the CDC that hopefully would state that the clinical judgment of the monitor would decide on a day by day basis what the restrictions of the healthcare worker would be. We want to make sure that an overly strict health official would not just say no to everything that has to do with freedom of movement. In this regard, we suggested that we put down some fundamental principles and guidelines which the public health official acting as the direct monitor could use in his/her decision-making process. The president commented towards the end of the discussion that we really need to have some clarity to this and not keep chasing after things. He bemoaned that over the past 3 weeks he has spent literally most of his time on this issue of Ebola and Ebola has killed one person in the USA, at the same time that he is dealing with ISIS, Iran, Ferguson shooting, ACA, border children and just 2 days ago (Friday) a deranged high school student in Washington State killed 2 fellow students, wounded several others and then shot himself. And so the POTUS was quite frustrated in his classically “calm” way Hopefully, we can get some crisp guidelines out soon. I continued to get a lot of hate mail related to the position that I articulated on the TV shows. After the White House meeting I went on a power walk with Christine had something to eat, and am now trying to catch up on the pounds of work and hundreds of e-mails that have piled up. On another issue, Marie-Paule Kieny and WHO are up to mischief again and trying to take over, or at least greatly influence the conduct of the randomized controlled trial for Ebola vaccine that Cliff has put together. It is truly extraordinary. First they said that such a trial was unethical. Now that we have agreement on the part of many parties including the companies as well as the Ministry of Health of Liberia, the WHO wants to butt in again and be involved in the design of the trial. I will have to get Sylvia Burwell involved in trying to block this egregious interference in an area which they have no expertise. They can always play their trump card and say with self-righteousness that they are only interested in the well-being and safety of Africans. However, we all know that that is not their motivation. They have been trying to block this trial and they have not been successful. Here again they want to insert themselves now that the trial is almost on its way. Cliff and I and Peggy Hamburg will likely seek Sylvia Burwell's help in getting to Margaret Chan, Dir. Gen. of WHO, to have her tell the WHO people to back off.