Tuesday, September 20, 2022

• Typical media distortions. Vivek Murthy was on MSNBC with Morning Joe and they showed a clip of POTUS saying that the pandemic was “over” and then they showed immediately after a short clip of “part” of my interview with Steve Morrison in a CSIS podcast of my saying: FAUCI [clip]: “we are not where we need to be if we're going to be able to quote live with the virus because we know we're not going to eradicate it. we only did that with one virus, which is smallpox, and that was very different. because smallpox doesn't change from year to year or decade to decade or even from century to century.” As expected this created somewhat of a disturbance with the meme being pitting me against the president of the United states. Rather typical press nonsense. The POTUS is getting pushback and criticism in that he has inadvertently undermined out attempts to get more money from the Congress for COVID since the GOP will now quote him as saying the pandemic is “Over”. I have been out there explaining that the POTUS meant that the “fulminant” nature of COVID when we were getting 3 to 4000 deaths per day is now behind us, whereas now even though we are at an acceptably high level of three to 400 deaths per day, it is still much better than it was many months ago. It is as good an explanation as any to get us back on track with the world realizing that we still have to take COVID very seriously with the current toll per day as well as the possibility that we might wind up getting another variant such as BA.2.75.2 in November. Went to the Kennedy Center last night to participate in the presentation to Cliff Lane of the Paul Volcker Career Achievement Medal (the “Sammies”) PRESS: Lancet Podcast interview; Podcast “Inside the Issues” with Alex Cohen (California); TED interview (Fireside Chat with David Biello);