Tuesday, July 6, 2021

Global USA A considerable amount of concern about the fact that reports from Israel indicate that the Pfizer vaccine is less protective against infection since the protection a few weeks ago prior to the emergence of the Delta variant was about 94%, whereas now that the Delta variant has emerged, protection against any infection is down to 64%. However, the good news is that the Pfizer vaccine is still more than 90% effective against serious diseases including hospitalization. It is conceivable that this discrepancy about the efficacy against the initial infection is due to the fact that the Israelis are doing a lot more testing of asymptomatic people than other countries including the United States. This needs to be followed closely. • I participated as I do most of the time in the weekly Governors’ briefing. I explained to them the situation of the threat of the Delta variant. I had my weekly briefing of the President today. This time I did it in person in the Roosevelt Room of the White House. We discussed the situation of the degree of protection afforded by our vaccines against the Delta variant. I also explained to him the situation regarding the Israeli data ( see above). The president remarked how much Jill enjoyed traveling with me and he thanked me for that saying that it means a lot to them. PRESS: I did YouTube interview with two African American physicians from California: Doctor Jamie Rutland and doctor Italo brown. We discussed how we handle vaccine hesitancy among African Americans and how we can use the barbershop environment to convince them to get vaccinated.