Sunday, February 28, 2021

at 12:51 a.m. EST

Global – 113,500,000/2,500,000; USA - 28,400,000/510,800 Big topic on the Sunday shows (see below) was the EUA Issued by the FDA for the Johnson and Johnson adeno virus vaccine. Also, there is concern that I expressed about easing up on prevention modalities since the decreasing slope up infections is starting to show signs of plateauing. On Face the Nation( see below) Margaret Brennan showed a clip of me being portrayed on Saturday Night Live by Kate McKinnon. Also, the governor of South Dakota Kristi Noem said that I was almost always wrong. She claims that the most important parameter of how well you are doing is how you maintain hospital capacity. When Margaret play that clip I was kind to the governor by saying different states do different things and in different ways, whereas I might have pointed out that her state has the most deaths per capita by COVID-19 than any other state in the country. Got a call from Jeff that Anita Dunn saw me on all the shows and said that I was fabulous. Flattening of decline concerning. We shall see what happens in the coming days and weeks. Had zoom call today with Ron Klain arranged by Jeff an included me Bechara, Marcela, Rochelle, Natalie, and others. The main topic was whether we should stick with our strategy of two doses in the usual time frame or switch to one dose and extend the interval by a couple of months before giving the second dose. Ron is concerned that in November we will be criticized for having let a few million people who would have been vaccinated remain UN vaccinated because we wanted to give two doses to everyone. I was the main explainer emphasizing that the second dose gives a much higher titer of antibody that will address at least partially the inevitable evolution of variants including those from California and importantly the B.1.526. Ron did not want to tell us what to do but he wanted to make sure that we seriously considered both alternatives and were comfortable without decision to stick with two doses on the regular regiment. The ACIP recommended to CDC to implement the EUA for the J & J vaccine. Now the CDC needs to recommend the distribution and we can start distributing 4,000,000 doses almost immediately and then we will have 20 million by the end of March and a total of 100,000,000 by the end of June PRESS: Was on 4 Sunday talk shows: ABC This Week with George Stephanopoulos; CNN State of the Union with Dana Bash; CBS Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan; NBC Meet the Press with Chuck Todd.