Wednesday, August 26, 2020

Global USA • POTUS holding more briefings with Scott Atlas and others (Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, Dr. Martin Kulldorff, and Dr. Cody Meissner) to the exclusion of Deb Birx. Making it very awkward for her. I have been out of the briefing loop for some time now. • We have been seeing surges that follow crowded events – Memorial Day, 4th of July, and now with Labor Day coming up, there is concern that we will see another “surge” as people move around, travel and return home from beaches, etc. We are playing “whack a mole” Sign in East Village, NYC: • Big shit show today about the change in CDC testing guidelines where they said if you are exposed to a documented case of COVID-19 you need not get tested if you are asymptomatic. This version was circulated at a TF meeting a couple of weeks ago and we were asked to look at it and sign on. I did so cursorily, made a change but did not grasp the implications of this change that means we put no emphasis on symptomatic spread. The guidelines were further discussed at a Aug 20 TF meeting when I was under general anesthesia for vocal cord surgery. When the shit hit the fan and the public health community went nuts at these changes, Brett Giroir said at a press conference that the TF, explicitly mentioning me, approved this, it got me vey upset. Clearly at the Aug 20 meeting, Deb Birx did not agree (she told me so). Also, I did not give it a lot of attention and I was not in the room for the final discussion when Deb objected. Sanjay Gupta (CNN) reported the disconnect between me and Brett which caused a bit of a media storm. Behind these changes was Scott Gottlieb • Telephone conversation between Peter Marks, Steve Hahn, Francis Collins, Cliff Lane, Mike Lauer, Dean Follmann, and Rich Forshee (FDA) about the basis of their declaring an EUA on CP. We (NIH) feel that FDA clearly caved to the White House and we were trying to examine the data that was the basis for their decision. Clearly Hahn was very defensive and Peter was “hurt” because he thought that the NIH was attacking the FDA. We settled it, but it is becoming clear that Steve is a bit more political than we are. Seems to be star struck about being around the White House and likely caved to Meadows. Who is looking for good news before the election. PRESS: Shit show about CDC guidelines changing and Brett Giroir saying that I approved them (see above)