Friday, July 16, 2021

I briefed the President in the Oval Office today about the Delta variant and its impact on our country. Present at the briefing were: Ron Klain, Susan Rice, Natalie Quillian, Jeff Zients, Anita Dunn, Brian Reese, Mike Donilon and Rochelle Walensky virtually. Given the increasing number of cases in the United States, even though the hospitalizations have not increased, the President was concerned that his message that by July 4th we would be seeing an independence from the virus here in the United states might actually be now subject to question. We spoke to him about the importance of emphasizing that vaccinated people do not get severe disease even from the Delta variant . In addition, we pointed out the possibility that we may need to give booster shots , namely a third dose following the two doses of the mRNA vaccine. The President was concerned that people would say that he was giving a mixed message when he asked everyone to get the standard regimen of vaccination and now we are telling them that they may need to get an additional dose. I pointed out to him that most people who are vaccinated would be quite amenable to getting a third dose so long as they thought it would increase the duration of their protection and or make them more highly protected. It is the people who do not want to get vaccinated to begin with who are going to be in trouble because they will get infected and they will need hospitalization. The POTUS and Jeff kept asking whether I thought that it would get as bad as the winter of 2020/2021. I said no since we did not have vaccinated people back then. Fox News hosts Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham and mocking our attempts to get people vaccinated likely leading to loss of lives. Rand Paul and Jim Jordan tweeting about me all the time and actually raising money by trying to discredit me Cases continue to climb: PRESS: MSNBC – “The Reid Out”; Peacock MSNBC – Joshua Johnson; CBS Evening news; NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt;