Friday, March 12, 2021

Global - USA Still plateauing: Briefed the Principals for our weekly briefing. I showed the replication cycle of SARS-CoV-2 and the vulnerable targets for direct anti-viral therapy David Kessler together with Rick Levin (formerly of Yale) made a proposal to provide through the congress 5 billion to me and NIAID to decide how we wanted to put together a “vaccine manufacturing plan that would involve everything from the fundamental research going into pandemic preparedness to the actual manufacturing of 300,000,000 doses of vaccine per year. This is an extraordinary offer then I will have to sit down with my team particularly John Mascola who was on the call with us to determine what aspect of this multifaceted plan that David proposed would be owned by us here at NIAID versus what we would give to HHS/ASPR/BARDA. I asked John to think about a team that we could put together in the beginning of the week to come back to David with a plan. Obviously, we will have to go 2 Francis Collins and thoroughly briefed him and get his buy in. PRESS: Zoom interview with Spike Lee for a documentary that he is filming; Politico by Sarah Owermohle and Erin Banco Fauci takes on a new role: Biden’s Covid whisperer Few others cast as long a shadow as Fauci — who over the last year has given America a crash course in epidemiology — especially with top health posts vacant.