Wednesday, August 11, 2021

David Kessler is pissed at Peter Staley. David feels betrayed that Peter mentioned his name and my name in his interview with Yasmeen. Last night I called up Courtney Rowe and had a long about the pros and cons of responding to Yasmeen who has been trying to get a comment from me regarding the article. We came to the conclusion that it would not do any good since the quote could be misinterpreted. I agree with Courtney. However we may have a problem that the article may set us back in getting jeff's support to push for billions of dollars to expand capacity to be directed 2 low and middle income countries. I will try to repair any damage that has been done to this effort. I had a good conversation with Peter this morning and I believe Peter realizes that he may had done some damage by mentioning my name and David's name in his interview with Yasmeen. It is again a delicate balance of trying to get an activist-driven push to get the right thing done and still operate within the system that alone has the capability of getting the right thing done with all of the political sensitivities involved. Email from David Barr to David Kessler: From: David Barr <davidbarr376@gmail.com> Sent: Wednesday, August 11, 2021 8:47 AM To: Kessler, David (HHS/IOS) <David.Kessler@hhs.gov>; Fauci, Anthony (NIH/NIAID) [E] <afauci@niaid.nih.gov> Subject: Follow up from the Washington Post story David - I saw your message to Peter. I think you have every reason to be annoyed at Peter's quote in the story. The story is about the sign-on letter that was developed as an outcome of a meeting sponsored by Yale School of Public Health, PrEP4All, ICAP at Columbia and AVAC, in which Peter was not involved. The letter is focused on the proposed plan to scale up mRNA vaccine manufacturing, a plan that has been public for many months now. The letter has nothing to do with the discussions we've been having with you and Tony and there was no reason whatsoever for Peter to have mentioned those discussions to the reporter. I don't see the quote as revealing any detailed information, but I do see how just saying publicly that we've been talking could undermine your negotiations. I've let Peter know that I'm not happy about this. I feel that you've worked with us in good faith and are making progress as evidenced by our last call. I hope we can keep these discussions going forward. Our goal is to ensure that vaccines are available to the world as quickly as possible. I know you share our concerns and understand the urgent need for this. I do not envy your current role in all this, as it must be both exhausting and frustrating. I remain confused as to why the President and the global public health establishment do not seem to truly share our concerns. Rather than lengthy negotiations with Moderna, why hasn't Biden hauled them into the Oval Office and said 'this is what is going to happen'? Instead of a piecemeal structure based on donations, why hasn't the WHO called for wartime footing to solve this problem? Meanwhile, the caseload grows and the potential for a new variant grows with it. Again, thanks for your efforts to date and I very much hope we can continue our discussions. David POTUS called me up today. Jeff is giving the president a briefing about a number of things and he wanted me to specifically brief him about the importance of giving a third dose of vaccine to immune compromised people. Jeff felt that it was not worth my going all the way down to the White House again since I was there yesterday and so he arranged in the middle of the meeting that he was having with the president to have the president call me on my cell phone and have me explained to him the rationale of the third dose , namely a booster, to immune compromised people since they never had an adequate immune response to begin with. The confusion that the president might have is to distinguish the boost for the immune compromised versus a boost for those who overtime have an attenuation of their response even though they are immunologically normal. It was for this reason that Jeff wanted me to do the explaining. I believe that the president understood what I was saying. Just to note that almost without exception every week I brief the Principals together with Jeff, Natalie, and Rochelle. the principles consist of cabinet secretaries as well as other high ranking White House officials. I don't report on it every week but it essentially occurs every week. Today I briefed them on various aspects of the delta variant. I did a favor for the State Department today by answering a series of Qs and As about the mRNA vaccines PRESS: CNN International with Christiane Amanpour; ABC World News Tonight and ABC Evening News; podcast – “America Dissected” with Dr. Abdul El-Sayed Borowitz satire report in the New Yorker: New Yorker: Fauci Says It Is Safe to Watch YouTube Now That Rand Paul Has Been Suspended