Sunday, April 26, 2020

(Sunday) – Global – 2,750,000/190,000; USA – 930,000/53,000 I was not on Sunday shows. Deb was on CNN with Jake Tapper and did not answer the question of whether it was a mistake for the POTUS to talk about injecting or swallowing bleach. Jake wrote me a text afterwards and said: “Birx has lost her way I fear. She has chosen to focus on defending the president and attacking the press. Odd.” Had very important teleconference that I called for , but was chaired by Francis Collins and Bob Kadlec. The entire call was to align BARDA with the mission of NIH. Up to now, BARDA did what they wanted as a “parallel” component to NIH in HHS without any real consultation or coordination. They are OK for taking a hand-off from us on a product that we do early concept and development and then give to them to fund a company to make a product and oput inot SNS. However, when it comes to the emergency of making a vaccine and they (without even consulting with us) give hundreds of millions of dollars each to several PHARMA companies to go their own way with no stipulations or requirements for coordination with us, then that is unacceptable. We discussed the need to re-boot with regard to BARDA and NIH and have them fund companies with the condition that they coordinate (protocol design, lab data, DSMBs, etc.) with NIH. Peter Marks (FDA) will help lead this new approach. Francis and Bob Kadlec are totally on board. Now the devil is in the details.