Monday, November 16, 2020

Global – 54,300,000/1,300,000; USA – 11,000,000/246,000 Continual surge: 138,000 new infections yesterday. POTUS has no interest at all in the Pandemic. He is focusing on blocking Biden from being POTUS. He is embarrassing the USA. However, 72,000,000 voted for him. Difficult to understand. Craziness has overtaken part of our country (1/2). Jared Kushner did call me up right before the press briefing related to the Moderna vaccine announcement (see below) *******The administration (POTUS, Pence, Meadows, etc) keep emphasizing that we have never been as well prepared to respond to this pandemic. They refer to hospital beds, ventilators, PPE, etc. They are missing the fact that the pandemic is raging and they are really doing NOTHING to stop its spread. They have essentially given up (see comments above from Mark Meadows) in stopping it and concentrating on having enough supplies to address the cases as they come in. In fact, smaller states (southwest, northwest) are rapidly running out of ICU beds and personnel. They are wrong on both accounts. Freddy Ford (George W. Bush’s Chief of Staff) emails me and mentions that W. wants to receive vaccine publicly to indicate his support for vaccines, and could I help out. Sir Elton John and husband David Furnish call me up and want to talk about how we can link the interest in COVID-19with sustained interested in ending the COVID pandemic. Great conversation; they are very “proud of me”. I suggest linking testing for COVID to getting tested for HIV and getting people on PrEP. They loved the idea. PRESS: NBC Today Show with Savannah Guthrie; CBS with Jon LaPook; WTOP Radio; Press briefing by Francis Collins, me, Stephane Bancel, Matt Hepburn; Stephen Hoge, John Mascola related to Moderna announcement