Wednesday, November 10, 2021

Global - 250,154,972/5,054,267; USA – 46,626,034/755,201 Many Eastern European countries by having record surges of COVID with increases in hospitalizations and deaths. These countries include the Ukraine, Romania, Russia, Bulgaria, among others. In the United states although the cases are plateauing as a group, there are other areas of the country particularly some of the western and northern states it is starting to see increases including the important state of California. In fact, the daily average over the past week for the country has shown a 5% increase in cases. Met by Zoom today with Eric Schultz at the request of Barack Obama - Eric was really very helpful. He has enormous experience at being a comms expert working with Barack Obama. He was involved in deflecting a lot of the criticism against Obama during his Presidency. Eric was very realistic about what can be done in my case although he admitted that the level of attacks against me was clerly organized and unprecendented. He wanted to find out what was being negatively impacted by all of this. I explained to him that it was a very strong strain on me but that I'm strong enough to withstand it and he seemed to resonate with that. I told him that my scientific staff seems to be able to do their job even though the onslaught of this is so clear to them and they feel badly about what I'm going through. I told him that the group that is getting most overwhelmed with this is my legislative and my communications staff. Eric felt that it would be very difficult to shame the right wing media and even the right wing members of Congress and the Senate, and so he is unsure whether going after them would make a difference. He wanted to know whether I needed more help at the staff level in communications and legislation. I don't think that we do need that but I referred him to Courtney Billet with whom he has already scheduled a meeting. He did say that he was interested in the Washington Post piece that will be written by Yasmeen Abutaleb. He feels that if we can galvanize other media people to call out these groups that are attacking me that this could be very helpful. Once you expose the people who are instigating this, they often are reluctant to continue. And so, I am waiting to see how is conversation with Courtney goes. I am very thankful to Barack Obama for helping to set up this meeting with Eric. Nice fireside chat with Bill First Bipartisan Center - The audience were a number of policy makers who listened in on the bipartisan senators discussions. Bill asked the usual questions ut the status of the outbreak but where we're going what does the end game look like and all the other questions that are generally asked. PRESS:Interview with “The Daily” – New York Times – Michael Barbaro;