Friday, August 27, 2021

Global – 214,500,000/4,470,000; USA – 38,500,000/632,800 Just as a follow up over the last days to weeks - I continue to get attacked viciously by the far right social media including FOX News. they are still dancing around the inappropriate conflating of gain of function research (See Willmann article above) and the origin of the virus. I am starting to get so annoyed by this that for the first time ever I'm seriously discussing with Christine the timeline not my stepping down from this ridiculously thankless situation that I'm in . I say that still knowing that it is very unlikely that I will do that. POTUS slight mis-speak – Interesting situation arose today. We were in our pre brief for the White House presser that would take place in 1/2 an hour. In the middle of the pre brief , president Biden called me up on my cell phone. He said he was in with the Prime Minister of Israel and the Prime Minister was telling him that Israel will be giving their booster shot at five months. The president wanted to know what we were doing about that and were we following the lead of Israel. I told him that we were sticking with eight months but since the ultimate decision will be with the acip that they would likely give us the possibility of a range from six to nine months and so depending on the data, we would have the option of giving it earlier . However, for now we were sticking with eight months beginning on September the 20th. Very shortly after I said that the president got up and said that we might start boosting earlier perhaps at five months because the Israelis are doing that and he spoke to me about it. As one might imagine this created a flurry among the press and White House comms . The good news is that everybody in White House comms knew exactly what I said to the President and so it was just one of those things that the President will say what the president will say (see below). And has been wanting to get more closely involved in the data flow and information flow . In this regard, he has asked me to see if I could get him more involved in the various meetings that we have among the White House medical team . I have arranged that and we will have him join the weekly meeting that Vivek organizers among the White House docs. In addition I have arranged for him to visit NIH and sit down for a roundtable chat mostly but the people from the VRC. We did that today and it was interesting as usual since Eric is a very smart guy. PRESS: TV and Radio for local stations: Black Information Network (Radio); Rolling Out (TV); The Root (Radio); Instagram Live with Geoff Edgers (Washington Post); White House plans to clarify Biden boosters statement Caitlin Owens (Axios)