Sunday, March 29, 2020

Cases continue to soar. BIG DAY AT WHITE HOUSE Spent several hours with the POTUS. Bottom line. Deb and I pushed hard to have the POTUS extend the 15 day guidelines for another 30 days to end of April even though Mark Meadows and Kevin Hassett were against this. They wanted to just go to 15 days extra and then re-evaluate. We pushed and said that we would leave to the POTUS. We met with the POTUS in OVAL and Deb and I presented the case for 30 days. He accepted that right away (he really trusts me very much). He decided that he did not want to wait three days to Tuesday to announce and so we Chaotically and quickly wrote into his speech the announcement that it would be 30 days. We had a press conference in the Rose Garden (RG) and he called several times of me and Deb to explain the rationale behind the decision. It was another of the painfully rambling press conferences that lasted on a beautiful evening the RG for 2 hours. POTUS kept on mentioning the potential 1.5 to 2.0 million deaths in the USA due to Coronavirus, which is actually the worst case scenario of a flawed model; however, he felt that if he keeps mentioning that, then the people will take what we are saying seriously. He is incorrigible. At the end of the day it was a good outcome since we convinced him to go with 30 day instead of ending the mitigation prematurely, which I feel would be a disaster. At the presser, I emphasized that we must pay attention to the cities/states/areas with relatively few cases since they could explode just like NYC and NOLA and other cities. CRAZY PRESS – the fringe far-right crazies are cooking conspiracy theories that I am a Hilary Clinton mole trying to destroy Trump. See NY Times – Sunday

“Chief Scientist Draw Venom From the Right” by Davey Alba and Sheera Frankel. Also, article in NY Times on “Testing Blunders….” By Michael Shear et al. GOOD ARTICLE: March 29, 2020 article by Jenny Jarvie AIDS crisis shaped Anthony Fauci, disease expert at front lines of coronavirus pandemic Los Angeles Times You're making me feel guilty,” President George W. Bush said in 2008 when he awarded Fauci, the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy ... Flag as irrelevant Great areticle in WSJ by Ben Cohen – March 29, 2020: WSJ: Dr. Fauci Was a Basketball Captain. Now He’s America’s Point Guard. https://on.wsj.com/33TOug3 PRESS: CNN State of the Union with Jake Tapper; big exposure at Rose Garden press Conference after announcing the 30 day extension of guidelines for mitigation.