Thursday, August 12, 2021

Global USA Now averaging (7 day) >100,000 cases per day Hospitaliations in children increasing per 100,000 population Had a good call with Hans Kluge, WHO Regional Director of Europe. Good discussion about mutual interests concerning COVID-19 and issues such as vaccine hesitancy. Had a very important Zoom with Chris Whitty and Patrick Valance see above) from the UK. Jeff has suggested that I call up Chris and Patrick and ask them what the strategy is in the UK regarding booster shots. To my surprise, I found out that they have not yet implemented booster shots for the immune compromised. They plan to do that in September. However, the bigger surprise was that although they are planning to give booster shots to the elderly starting with those who are 70 years old and older and then moving to the 60 years old and older, they will not boost anyone less than 50 years old . This means that they have no intention of boosting the general population who are not immune suppressed. Of note, this is consistent with their strategy that they care less about transmission of virus among individuals than they do about keeping people out of the hospital . That's why they feel that although the general population might have a decrease in effectiveness of the vaccines leading to infection and transmission, they are not concerned since the protection against severe disease is holding strong. This is consistent with their strategy of not wearing a mask and sending the children back to school without masks. In other words, they feel that we will have to live with transmission of the virus so long as we protect people from getting severe enough disease to be hospitalized. Jeff and president Biden were concerned that we would be behind other countries in protecting our citizens when in fact we are ahead of them, certainly ahead of the UK. PRESS: White House Press Conference; ABC “Good Morning America” with Amy Robach; NBC “Today” with Craig Melvin; CBS “This Morning” with Vladmir Duthiers; ABC “World News Tonight” with David Muir; NBC “Nightly News” with Lester Holt; PBS “NewsHour” with William Brangham; KMBC (ABC) TV – Kansas City, MO with Mike Mahoney; KDFW TV (FOX) Dallas-Fort Worth with Steven Dial; WPLG TV (ABC) Miami with Ben Kennedy; Univision TV with Lourdes del Rio; Telemundo National TV with Jose Diaz-Balart; Univision Atlanta TV with Rafael Olavarria; MSNBC “The Reid Out” with Joy Reid; CNN AC/360 with Anderson Cooper;