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depending on the level of infection
in the community where they are living. Rochelle is really having a very tough time in
negotiating this with Jeff in the context of “her team” at CDC that seems to be operating in their
usual manner independently of running things by the White House. For example at the end of a
long and tortuous discussion about getting the wording correct in the new guideline, Rochelle let
us know that two days from now (Wednesday) the CDC will be coming out with an MMWR that
will overlap with what we have been wordsmithing for the guideline. Jeff and everyone else was
blown away that these two parallel things were going on and we did not even know about it. I
feel badly for Rochelle since she is dealing with an ingrained CDC system that has been that way
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
for the decades that I have been dealing with them. Jeff and the White House Comms people
(Courtney Rowe) are very concerned about mixed messaging. We decided that we would sleep
on this and address it again in the morning.
July 27, 2021 – Global – 194,600,000/4,200,000; USA – 34,500,000/609,000
Just got a call from Jeff that he wants me to brief the President today about the issues
discussed above. It is very clear and unfortunate that confidence in Rochelle is very low within
the White House team of Jeff, Courtney Rowe, and others. STAY TUNED
Had a good conversation with the President in the Oval Office this afternoon at 12:30. I
explained to him the new CDC guidelines for wearing masks indoors even if you are vaccinated
given the fact that the delta variant is causing breakthrough infections in vaccinated individuals
and vaccinated individuals with breakthrough infections can transmit the virus two uninfected
individuals. In addition, I explained to him the data that the level of virus in the nasopharynx of
vaccinated people with breakthrough infections is similar to the level of virus in the nasopharynx
of unvaccinated infected people. We had a good conversation; he asked a lot of good questions.
Right before the discussion he was on the phone with former senator Barbara Boxer who had just
been mugged outside of her house. She asked to talk to me when she heard that the president
would be meeting with me and we had a good conversation. She relayed that she felt very badly
that idiots are attacking me and that she always has had the highest degree of regard for me. She
recalled back in the days when we were fighting HIV together. I asked the president if Jill had
come back from the Olympics in Tokyo. The President informed me that she had and so I sent
her my regards through him.
As Jeff , Natalie Quillian, and I were sitting in front of the Resolute Desk, I had a very
strange, almost out of body experience. I just recalled at that time so clearly the bizarre
situations that I had been through in the past when I sat in front of the desk trying to brief
President trump. I recalled his incredible lack of concentration ability where his attention span
was measured in seconds rather than minutes. This is in stark contrast to the seriousness, dignity,
and integrity that now permeates the entire White House, particularly the Oval Office. Only now
in retrospect do I fully appreciate what a disaster Trump was as President. This applies not only
to his policies, but to the fact that he diminished the dignity of the presidency enormously. The
feeling in the Oval Office now is very similar to what I experienced when I was in the Oval
Office with presidents George HW Bush, George W Bush, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama. This
is such an entirely different feeling and vibration that I have when I enter the room and sit down
either on the couch or in front of the desk. There was always that feeling of anxiety with Trump
where I was anticipating that he would say or do something outlandish.
PRESS: Big announcement from CDC about masking for vaccinated people indoors
attracting much media – Print interviews with NY Times and Washington Post.
The Intercept: Rand Paul’s Attack on Anthony Fauci Chills Scientific Debate Over Gain-
of-Function Research https://bit.ly/3iR7zHP
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
The Black News Channel “The World Tonight”; NBC “Nightly News” with Lester Holt;
NPR “All Things Considered” with Ari Shapiro; PBS “NewsHour” with Judy Woodruff;
Univision National TV; Telemundo TV; CNN with Chris Cuomo; MSNBC with Chris
Hayes;
A Man Was Arrested For Allegedly
Threatening To Kill Anthony Fauci And His
Family
The 56-year-old sent emails with a long list of threats, including to beat Fauci and his family to
death, prosecutors said.
Nicole FallertBuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on July 27, 2021, at 6:35 p.m. ET
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
J. Scott Applewhite / AP
Anthony Fauci addresses Sen. Rand Paul on July 20.
A 56-year-old man was arrested for allegedly sending messages threatening Anthony
Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease scientist, and his family, saying they would be
“dragged into the street, beaten to death, and set on fire.”
Thomas Patrick Connally Jr. of Greenbelt, Maryland, was charged with threats against a
federal official and interstate communication containing a threat to harm, according to a
federal criminal complaint filed Monday.
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“We will never tolerate violent threats against public officials,” acting US Attorney
Jonathan Lenzner said in the complaint. “Our public health officials deserve our thanks
and appreciation for their tireless work, and we will not hesitate to bring charges against
those individuals who seek to use fear to silence these public servants.”
Connally allegedly sent threatening emails from December 2020 to July 2021 telling
Fauci to "blow your own fucking brains out" and referred to the doctor as a "liar" and a
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
"fraud." The threats to Fauci and his family were sent from an email account via a
provider of encrypted services based in Switzerland, according to investigators.
"Hope you get a bullet in your compromised satanic elf skull today," the subject line of
two emails Fauci received in December 2020 states. On April 24 alone, he received seven
emails from the encrypted email account, according to the affidavit filed in support of the
criminal complaint. The emails also encourage Fauci to kill himself and contain death
threats against him and his family.
If convicted, Connally faces up to 10 years in federal prison for threats against a federal
official and a maximum of five years in federal prison for interstate communication
containing a threat to harm.
ADVERTISEMENT
Twitter: @MacFarlaneNews
This isn't the first time Fauci and his family received death threats amid the coronavirus
pandemic, and it's only gotten worse as conservatives manifest their frustration over
COVID-19 restrictions into more vitriol.
Just last week, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida announced drink koozies and T-
shirts reading "Don't Fauci My Florida" as part of a campaign, the Washington
Post reported. Fox News host Tucker Carlson has called Fauci — now a White House
medical adviser — a "fraud" and has pushed for an investigation of the doctor's role
concerning the origins of COVID-19. Republican members of the House filed a "Fire
Fauci Act" in April.
Fauci's strained relationship with former president Donald Trump has also made him a
target for conservatives. The doctor told the New York Times earlier this year of his
difficulty to get Trump to listen to his scientific recommendations.
"I would try to express the gravity of the situation, and the response of the president was
always leaning toward, 'Well, it’s not that bad, right?' And I would say, 'Yes, it is that
bad,'" Fauci told the Times.
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Fauci has been vocal about the death threats directed at him and his family, which he
told the Times started as early as March 2020. In one instance, he received a letter
containing powder that exploded all over his face and chest.
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
"Getting death threats for me and my family and harassing my daughters to the point
where I have to get security is just, I mean, it's amazing," Fauci said during an online
forum last year. At that time, he called the threats "unseemly things that crises bring out
in people."
Fauci told CNN this week that the US is "going in the wrong direction" in terms of
COVID-19 cases. He blamed unvaccinated Americans for the surge in infections,
particularly with the more contagious Delta variant.
Connally is due to appear in a federal court on Wednesday.
Story also covered in other media – New York Post, Axios, Forbes, Newsweek, CNN, The
Hill
July 28, 2021 – Global USA
Cases continue to surge:
PRESS: MSNBC – “Morning Joe” with Joe Scarborough; Joe Madison Radio Show;
Morning Hustle Radio Show;
July 29, 2021
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
There are a lot of important things going on that I do not have a chance to comment on in
my daily diary. Some of these are the continual conversations that I have been having with Jeff
about who should be the FDA Commissioner. Jeff and Ron Klain continue to run by me names
of potential candidates. Today for example, David Kessler came to me with a surprising request
that I float his name to Ron as a possible candidate. David is currently the head of the
countermeasure acceleration group (CAG) of HHS. He is a former FDA commissioner and
would likely do a very good job. I will float his name and see what happens.
In another vein, I continue to get harassed by letters from far-right congressmen and
senators who are cherry picking my FOIA’d emails and trying to establish that I have lied under
oath when I said that the NIH has never done gain of function research at the Wuhan institute of
virology. In addition, Tucker Carlson and others at Fox News continue to attack me virtually
every night. Carlson saying multiple times that I created the virus. This is an extremely stressful
situation but I will have to push on with the job that I have as director of NIAID and as chief
medical advisor to President Biden.
Another issue that is percolating it's a growing discontent with the CDC and with Rochelle’s
difficulty in clearly articulating their somewhat shifting positions such as that of masking
indoors. I do not believe that it is Rochelle’s fault but it is a fundamental lesion in the CDC. One
of the problems is the typical CDC mentality that antedated Rochelle. Rochelle and the CDC are
hesitant to show anyone data that backs up their policy because it is supposedly “embargoed. The
problem is that the embargo relates to the MMWR, which is the CDC's own publication.
Therefore it seems that if they wanted to break the embargo they could easily do it. Again, this is
a recurrent problem with the CDC keeping data close to their vest and making policy without
allowing outside experts to weigh in.
It was an evolving situation here. Got a call from Jeff just now reading a sentence from the
President's speech that he will give today in which he said that children do get infected, but a
serious outcome is “extremely, extremely rare”. In my meeting with my office team this
morning someone pointed out that in Arkansas on Wednesday there were 24 infections in
children; seven of them wound up in the ICU and two of them are on respirators. I had originally
told Jeff to get rid of one of the “extremelies” and just say “extremely rare”. After hearing about
the infections in Arkansas I called back Jeff and told him to get rid of both “extremelies” and just
say “rare “. We actually do not know the full impact of this virus on children at this point and so
we really need to be careful about what we say and what we allow the POTUS to say.
We are on a similar track as UK but a few weeks behind (as is usually the case):
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
Very important essay by Peter Hotez:
PLoS Biol/Hotez: Mounting antiscience aggression in the United States
https://bit.ly/3lbsKXF
We had a briefing today from the house Select Committee on COVID-19 chared by
representative Clyburn. It was supposed to be limited to a discussion on the delta variant.
However, it was clear that when the Republicans were allowed to ask questions they went off
the subject and started to ask questions about infections coming over the border from Mexico. In
typical fashion Jim Jordan asked me if I was a member of the P3CO oversight committee when
in fact there is no such a thing as a P3 CO oversight committee. We have an executive committee
of which I am not a member. Fortunately, even though I did not know what he was talking about,
I said that I was not a member. He then asked for a list of the members. Since I really didn't
know what he was talking about I said that I would get him that list. As it turns out, this is a list
that HHS does not want to make public. HHS will get back to him and explain that to him.
Obviously, he will make a big deal about this publicly.
The Republicans in the Congress as well as Fox News continue to attack me viciously. I
was particularly disappointed today to read Newt Gingrich whom I have always liked and
respected came out and said that it was time for me to retire. He said that although I have had an
illustrious career, I am trying to defend the indefensible. I am really not sure what he meant by
that. Did he mean that I was defending gain of function research or did he mean that I was
defending the CDC's masking guideline? As Peter Hotez said in the article above, no one is
stepping up in the scientific community to defend me since they are afraid of being threatened by
this extreme group that seems to be very well organized.
Went to a book signing party add the home of Adrienne Arsh. The book is “I alone can fix it “
bye Phil Rucker and Carol Leonnig. The Super a list from Washington DC was there. It was a
little bit uncomfortable since I was wearing a mask with the new guidance from the CDC and
almost everyone else was without a mask. When they saw me with a mask , several of them put a
mask on.
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
One of the things for discussion in the book for this time frame is the extraordinary confidence
that the president, Ron Klain, and especially Jeff is placing in me. When I briefed the
president before his speech a couple of days ago , Jeff did not want Rochelle to brief the
president even though the discussion was strictly about CDC guidelines.
PRESS: South African TV – Bhekisisa Center for Health Journalism with Mia Malan;
Ken Jeong Instagram; WTOP Radio; NBC LX TV;
July 30, 2021 – Global USA
There is growing frustration fall apart of Jeff with the CDC and particularly with Rochelle.
I love her but she does not seem to have control over organization. We were being briefed the
other night about what we were going to be saying about boosters and about the effect of the
delta variant. In the middle of the conversation we found out that an MMWR was already written
that could possibly be in conflict with what we were discussing. (see above). Now we have a
situation where a slide set that was for internal discussion within the CDC was leaked by the
CDC to the Washington Post including a discussion of things that we had not vetted out with the
Medical Group. Jeff was extremely concerned that we are now on the defense trying to explain
or defend things in an internal document that is now public. He called a special zoom meeting
with himself , me , and Rochelle to try and sort this out. It became clear during the discussion
that Rochelle herself was somewhat unaware of what her own CDC people were doing. I felt
very bad for her because she is clearly very competent. we will have another zoom meeting later
today since Jeff tasked me to review the papers upon which the CDC conclusion that the delta
variant causes more severe disease was based. I will have myself, Andrea Lerner, Cliff lane, and
Dean Follmann review the papers. After review by my “team” we found that the Singapore data
was very weak but that the Scotland and Canada data suggest that there is an increase in severity
with the delta variant. I communicated this both to Jeff and to Rochelle.
I had a very interesting conversation with the Prime Minister of Israel, Naftali Bennett,
who requested a zoom call with me. Based on the diminishing efficacy of the Pfizer vaccine in
Israel, the Prime Minister together with his health ministers have decided that they will give a
third booster shot to individuals older than 60 years old. They are already giving a booster to
people who are immunosuppressed. the Prime Minister wanted to get my opinion and ultimate
support of what he is doing. with my permission he taped our discussion so that he could put it
on his Instagram to show to the people of Israel. I pointed out to him that there will be some
concern that he is boosting people in his own population while much of the world has not yet
received their first dose. He understands that but pointed out to me that is real is a country of
almost 9 million people and they have just enough doses to take care of their own people , and
unlike the United states, they do not have the resources to supply the rest of the world. He asked
for my cell phone number so that he might intermittently call me for advice. With the approval of
the State Department I gave it to him. It seems that we have developed a very good rapport on
the basis of this first meeting. It turns out that the Prime Minister is an extremely interesting
man who was a combat commander (Major) in the Israeli Defense Forces in a Special Forces
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
unit. He led many Special Forces operations. In addition, he has spent many years in the United
States and has made millions of dollars as a software entrepreneur.
PRESS: Global National TV – Canada; Spectrum News TV – California; NPR – “All
Things Considered” with Ailsa Chang
July 31, 2021 – Global – 196,6000,000/4,200,000; USA – 34,800,000/610,000
Instagram from Israeli PM Bennett:
August 1. 2021 – Global USA – 34,900,000/611,000
I got involved in an interesting situation regarding the expiration of the moratorium on
evictions with the CDC in the middle of it. Apparently, the CDC has the authority to block
evictions during a public health emergency. The moratorium expired and the Supreme Court
ruled that they could not reinstitute it. Now Nancy Pelosi is furious because the public is blaming
the Congress for not solving the problem. Pelosi is asking the White House to do it and the
White House is turfing it to the CDC. The CDC does not have the authority to overrule the courts
and so there's a lot of tension going on. Larry Horowitz who works with Pelosi called me to ask
me to try and convince Rochelle to reinstitute the moratorium, get sued (which she will lose ),
and thus give enough time to get money to the people who are being evicted to prevent their
eviction. I got on the phone with Rochelle and offered to help her by giving her encouragement
and support. It all worked out when Jeff Zientz worked with Ron Klain to have Rochelle write a
letter to the president saying that she would love to keep the moratorium but it is legally out of
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
her hands. In this way the good intention of the administration would be displayed , but they
would not get into legal difficulty.
PRESS: ABC “This Week” with Jonathan Karl; CBS “Face the Nation” with John
Dickerson
August 2, 2021 – Global USA
I briefed the President today in the Oval Office. It was part of the weekly briefing that we do
where Rochelle and Vivek and Marcella were on the zoom screen and I was in the office with the
President and the Vice President. I briefed him on the efficacy of the vaccine against the delta
variant as well as on the issue of breakthrough infections and the possibility of our need for
boosters. The President was his usual pleasant and calm self; however, he seemed a bit troubled
about two issues: first, he is aware that everyone is waiting for the FDA to give final approval to
the vaccines and that this would go a long way to getting more people vaccinated. He clearly
does not want to interfere with the FDA; however, he is growing impatient with the length of
time that is taking for them to come across with a full approval. Second, he is concerned about
the fact that the moratorium on evictions of people from their homes has expired and the
Supreme Court has voted five to four that the moratorium cannot be extended. He has the power
to call together constitutional scholars and claim that they have given him enough reason to
overrule the opinion of the Supreme Court and order the CDC to continue with the moratorium
on evictions. He is hesitant to do that since although he believes it is the right thing to do from a
humanitarian standpoint, he does not want to set a precedent for a President to use his or her
Presidential authority to overrule a Supreme Court ruling. He is afraid that if we get another
President similar to Trump, that a lot of mischief and bad acting could occur if such a precedent
were set. And so, he has to live with the uncomfortable situation of Nancy Pelosi essentially
yelling at him on the phone to do something about the eviction situation when in some respects
he is powerless to do so. I feel for him and I am more appreciative close and personal of the
weight of the Presidency.
As it turns out, the President did get an opinion from some constitutional scholars and
made the decision to ask the CDC to extend the moratorium for 30 days. As Ron Klain said
in the White House , it is likely that the courts will overturn this extended moratorium pretty
quickly . We shall see. The general spin is that the president did this because of extensive
pressure from Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic Congress.
Governor Ned Lamont of Connecticut called me today in frustration that the FDA has not yet
given full BLA approval to the COVID-19 vaccines. He asked if I could do anything about it . I
explained to him that that would be difficult since it would suggest that we are putting pressure
on the FDA which could backfire on us. I told him that I was very much in favor of accelerating
the process and that I felt that the approval would likely come within the next couple of weeks .
He also asked about booster shots and I explained to him that boosters for the
immunocompromised would likely come very soon and that it would probably take a couple of
months before there was enough data to recommend booster shots for the elderly.
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
Got a call today from John Bel Edwards, Governor of Louisiana. He is having the biggest
surge of cases of any state in the country right now and he is asking for my support in what he
will soon do and that is to put in a mask mandate for all indoor public settings as well As for
everyone in the school system which will start today. He asked if I had any further suggestions. I
asked if he had ordered a restricted capacity or closing of bars and restaurants and he said that
although he would like to do that, he feels that the legislature would rebel against him and take
away his emergency powers for public health. And so he wants to get his mask mandate through
as his first priority. I agree with him. In addition before we hung up he said that he really
admired me and felt badly of what I was going through with the far right attacking me. He said a
very nice thing when he said: “you have bigger clowns to deal with than I do; maybe not more
clowns, but certainly bigger clowns, but at least you can sleep at night with a clear conscience “.
The conspiracy of the far right and the trump loyalists continues. Recently representative
Mike McCall the minority On the House Foreign Affairs Committee released a report by
the panel's republican staff essentially saying that the lab leak was the cause of COVID-19
and hinting the NIH's role in creating the virus. This is based on no new information or no
new data. It is very clear what is going on and it needs to be called out. It is all part of “The Big
Lie”. First, trump actually won the election; next, January 6th was a friendly visit to the capital
book shop; next trump was right and China caused the virus; next Fauci and the NIH helped the
Chinese create the virus; next, discredit Fauci and it looks like trump is telling the truth. It is
plain and simple a concerted effort aimed at getting trump re-elected and exonerating him from
any blame in the complete mess up of his response to COVID-19.
Lindsey Graham has contracted COVID-19 period since he is vaccinated he has a mild case. I
asked his staff to have him give me a call , which he did and I expressed concern for him and
offered to help if I could. He was very grateful for my concern instead we would keep in touch.
PRESS: White House pressor;
August 3, 2021 – Global – 198,000,000/4,200,000; USA – 35,200,000/612,000
We continue to average about 70,000 cases per day
An ironic situation is going on in Florida where Governor DeSantis has a state that has the
most infections per day in the country and is still insisting that mask mandates are not allowed at
the local level by the schools or by anyone else. In addition, he continues to raise money by
slamming me with T shirts as well as by his slogan “don't Fauci my Florida”. Besides being a
total jerk, he is causing people to die in his home state.
Did Governor’s call today – Chaired by Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R-AK)
White House has asked me to interview candidates for the position of FDA commissioner.
And so today I am interviewing Sudip Parikh whom I knew when he was the staff director for
the Senate Appropriations Committee. I was impressed with his interview since he is a very
smart and energetic person. I also interviewed James Hildreth who is currently president and
CEO of Meharry medical school. I have known Jim for a long time and he is highly qualified.
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
Gov. Cuomo is in serious trouble politically. A report came out today detailing 11 instances of
sexual harassment. President Biden as well as Nancy Pelosi has called for his resignation . If he
does not resign, he will likely be impeached.
Richard Ebright (Rutgers) has proven again that he is truly an asshole. Francis Collins was
on CNN this morning and misspoke saying that adults who have children at home should wear a
mask at home , which is clearly not correct. However , Frances very quickly corrected his
statement by putting out a tweet , apologizing , and saying that he was incorrect. Yet
immediately after that doctor Richard Ebright followed this up with a very nasty tweet . See
below:
This evening I was asked by Erin Burnett on CNN to clarify the situation once and for all. I
stated that Francis misspoke but to his great credit he immediately apologized and corrected the
mistake.
I e-mailed Susan Rice tonight asking her to call me, and she returned call at around 9:00
PM. I wanted to explain more fully to her the misperception about the “likelihood” that a
vaccinated person would get infected. In a discussion we had yesterday where I briefed some of
the economic leaders including Janet Yellin and Susan Rice, the question came up as to what it
means when there is a 79% efficacy of a vaccine against the delta variant. Many people interpret
this to mean that there is then a 21% chance that a vaccinated person will get infected . This is
obviously incorrect since you must compare it to the unvaccinated people. Since not all the
unvaccinated people get infected by any means, then the 79% protection compared to the
unvaccinated people means that a very, very small proportion of vaccinated people will get
infected. Susan was very grateful for the phone call and said as he has often dos when she sees
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
me that she “loves” me. We have become good friends over the years dating back to the Obama
administration, and I really like her.
PRESS: Axios interview with Eileen O’Reilly; Podcast with Creative Artists Agency –
agent for many entertainment and sports figures; Podcast with CSIS – Steve Morrison;
CBS Evening News with Nikki Battiste; CNN with Erin Burnett; Did a Webinar with
Virginia Governor Northam;
August 4, 2021 – Global USA
Had 100,000 cases yesterday!! 104,000 cases today
I received the call today from former Vice President Dick Cheney - This is medically
confidential and not for publication in my memoir. The VP was asked to give the eulogy for
former Secretary of Defense and dear friend Donald Rumsfeld. Cheney had a heart transplant
several years ago and is on immunosuppressive regimen. It is likely that his immune response
two the vaccine is suboptimal. He called his cardiologist , Jonathan Reiner, at GW and asked his
advice about coming to Washington to give a eulogy for Rumsfeld given the current situation
with the delta variant. Reiner recommended that he called me. I made it very clear to Cheney that
I strongly recommended he get the third boost of the mRNA since he is highly susceptible to
getting infected if he comes into contact with an infected person. We spend some time
discussing the courage of his daughter Liz Cheney and sticking up against the far right
Republicans who want to whitewash the January 6th insurrection. I told him that she was a chip
off the old block and I really appreciated the fact that she has been sticking up for me. Cheney
said he admired very much my courage and fortitude and standing up for what was right and he
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
is proud to tell friends that he knows me and used to work closely with me. I told him that the
feeling was mutual when I talk about him to my friends.
Call with Eric Goosby - Eric is concerned that we are not utilizing the infrastructure of
PEPFAR to solve the distribution problem of vaccines in sub saharan Africa. Eric points out that
the obstruction here interestingly is Gayle Smith who is now the special director in the
Department of State for global affairs. Eric points out that it is the same competition intention
between USAID and other global entities of the federal government. Gayle and USAID want to
be the focal point of the failing distribution of vaccines in Africa, while PEPFAR already has an
extraordinarily effective infrastructure that was built for HIV. Eric is frustrated that we are not
using that infrastructure.
Did Zoom with Senator Dick Durbin who wanted a briefing on breakthroughs and boosters
PRESS: Katie Couric podcast; Wall Street Journal podcast with Ryan Knudson; Australian
broadcasting TV “7/30”
August 5, 2021 – Global USA
I had a very busy day today. Jeff arranged for me to brief both the house and the Senate via
zoom on the latest in the COVID situation. In addition , I joined the first gentleman Greg Emhoff
in discussing with a bunch of young communicators the importance of their work in getting their
young peers vaccinated. This is the second time that I have done an event with the first
gentleman. In addition, I met by zoom with Kathy Russell the head uh White House personnel to
debrief her on the interviews I did with FDA candidates James Hildreth and Sudip Parikh.
During the debriefing when they asked me if there were any other candidates that I would
recommend, I strongly recommended Zeke Emanuel. However, as usual there was a concern
about the fact that he can be a bit of a loose cannon. This is unfortunate since he is a very
talented guy , intellectually brilliant, and very visionary. He is also a good friend.
The nonsense of the far right in trying to discredit me continues . A day does not go by
without either the far right GOP congressman or senator criticizing me and even calling for my
removal together with the far right media , particularly FOX, being sharply critical of me in
every respect.
PRESS: ABC “Good Morning America” with George Stephanopoulos; Rickey Smiley
Radio Show; Taped CNN Fareed Zakaria for this Sunday;
August 6, 2021 – Global – 200,800,000/4,300,000; USA - 35,500,000/614,000
67,000 7-day average
Cases continue to climb. There has been a lot of discussion about whether or not we should move
quickly in instituting a program. I have been a very strong and vocal advocate to give booster
shots immediately to people who are immune compromised such as those who are transplant
recipients, those war on cancer chemotherapy, and those who are immunosuppressed because the
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
border immune diseases. I have been explicit about that and have also been pushing the CDC to
give us at least some preliminary data on the cohort studies that they say will inform us about the
durability of protection among various groups of people. Other countries including France,
Israel, and Germany, have decided to give boosts to the elderly right now. The UK has decided
that they will start doing this in September. In this context, Jeff is getting very disillusioned with
Rochelle and the CDC in their traditional way of not giving anyone even a slight hint of what the
data shows until they are ready to announce it officially. A typical example of this has occurred
today. I will be on a lot of press calls today and over the weekend and the CDC just announced
that they have an MMWR that will be coming out together with a couple of papers in JAMA. I
have no idea what is in these publications. This is unacceptable . Similar to what Sylvia burwell
discuss with me years ago about firing Tom Frieden, Jeff is seriously thinking about either
bringing in someone else to assist Rochelle or outright getting rid of her. I have argued that
we should absolutely not fire her, and I have offered to speak with her about this issue.
I had a long call with Rochelle tonight and explained the entire situation to her. I confirmed
that I totally support her, but she really has to address the ingrained and somewhat ossified
culture of the CDC. I particularly pointed out to her that she just cannot hold back information
from Jeff and the White House team because she is waiting for her team to finalize data. If she
has preliminary data she needs to tell us about it since we may need to talk about policy that
would depend on such data. She just cannot give us an MMWR on the same day that is coming
out. The last time this happened she said she could not give it to us because it was “under
embargo “. I pointed out to her that this enraged Jeff since the CDC owns MMWR and as
director of CDC she needs to realize that no one is trying to influence what goes into MMWR
but it is important that she does not surprise Jeff or the president with something that she knows
and that we do not know. I love Rochelle and she knows that. I explained to her what she needs
to do to make things right with Jeff . A human explained to her the story from years ago when I
saved Tom Frieden from getting fired by Sylvia Burwell because of how he messed up the ebola
situation as a result of his listening to “his guys “. I believe that Rochelle gets it and will survive
this very difficult time. I support her totally.
PRESS: WJXX -Jacksonville TV; Bloomberg TV interview – Madison Mills; 1 hour with
USA Today Editorial Board; Zoom Call with Michael Spector for his adio-book; MSNBC
peacock TV with Joshua Johnson
August 7, 2021
The surge continues:
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
Governor DeSantis is a complete disgrace. He is blocking the local authorities from mandating
masks in various locations including schools. He is doing this while at the same time Florida is
virtually on fire with surging cases. Approximately 20% of all the cases in the country right now
are in Florida. When you add Florida with Texas you get about 40% of all the cases in the
country. At the same time he together with his Greek chorus of Rand Paul and other GOP
members of Congress together with all of the stooges at Fox News (Carlson, Hannity, Ingraham),
continues to actively criticize me and talk virtually every day about my being wrong on
everything I say and then I should be fired. This is an obviously calculated plan of disparaging
me and any other scientists (but focusing heavily on me) that speak up against their crazy
strategy. I am convinced even more that this is part of the total dystopia going on in certain
elements of the country and it is all linked to “The Big Lie” involving the election and the denial
of January 6. I really am worried more about the country then about myself since if this goes on I
fear that our democracy is in dire danger.
We had an important conversation today with Glenda Gray and Linda-Gail Bekker of the
Republic of South Africa. The discussion centered around the fact that Glenda and Linda GAIL
want to do a randomized placebo-controlled trial using the Moderna M RNA. The purpose of the
study is to determine if and how well mRNA vaccine works in persons with HIV. We have a real
problem with doing a randomized placebo-controlled trial and so we got on the phone with
David Kessler, the people from NIAID including Cliff, John Mascola, Mary Maravich, Carl D.,
and others. I came up with a solution that everyone liked. That was to do a trial where each arm
gets a prime in boost dose of Moderna and then one group gets randomized to placebo and the
other group gets randomized to a third dose boost. This will kill two birds with one stone. It will
avoid the controversial use of a placebo and at the same time tell you whether the mRNA
vaccine works in persons with HIV and whether and whether or not they need a boost for
optimal response.
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
August 8, 2021 – Global USA
PRESS: CNN “GPS” with Fareed Zakaria; NBC “Meet the Press” with Chuck Todd
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
August 9, 2021 – Global USA
Cases 140,000 yesterday. It seems that my prediction of 200,000/day will come true
unfortunately.
We're having continual and difficult discussions concerning boosters. With my strong persuasion
we have now finally arrived to the reality that we must give an additional dose to
immunocompromised people as quickly as possible. The real issue that we are struggling with is
when how and to whom we should give boosters among the population in general. Clearly, we
want to stagger it so that we don't have rush to the gate. We're trying to get as much data as
possible to validate a decision to start giving it to the elderly at approximately 8 months
following their initial vaccination.
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
I continue to struggle with having to defend the CDC against reasonable concern about the fact
that they are generally behind the curve when it comes to accumulating data that would inform
proper public health action. He gets back to previous conversations that we had concerning the
entrenched culture at CDC who feel that they know best and they are not accountable to anyone.
Under non pandemic conditions this goes un-noticed. However, in the middle of an outbreak of
this proportion it is a glaring deficit.
PRESS: Black News Channel (TV); Hugh Hewitt Radio; Navajo Times Interview; BBC
World News TV
August 10, 2021 - Global USA
The soaring of cases continue. It is really looking rather ominous in that there have been
numerous reports of gatherings of completely vaccinated people in a moderate to small sized
party 20 thirty 40 people where you have outbreak of infections among these individuals. It is
very clear that this virus is very different in its ability to transmit compared to the alpha variant.
There have been a number of discussions regarding the use of additional booster shots. I
have been a strong proponent and have led the discussion in getting additional booster doses to
the people who are immunosuppressed, and to get these doses to them imminently. We have had
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
several meetings with Jeff and the team and in some cases with the FDA to try and expedite this.
It becomes an issue of the clinical data in a somewhat preliminary form balanced against the
need of the FDA to have firm data before they modify the EUA. The tension between Jeff and
the CDC continues in that the culture does not allow the CDC to share data in real time in a
situation in which you actually need data in real time to make a decision. The lack of confidence
in Rochelle and the rest of the CDC is manifested by the fact that Jeff is having me as opposed to
Rochelle brief the President about things that appear to be strictly epidemiological. The same
holds true for briefings of the principles and the governors. I don't know what to do to help
Rochelle change the culture of the CDC because this is a decades-long problem. Vivek is in total
agreement with me on this issue.
I met with the President today in the state dining room of the White House to discuss
together with the administrator of FEMA Deanne Criswell and Assistant to the POTUS for
Homeland Security Liz Sherwood-Randall among others and together with Natalie and Jeff. The
topic of the discussion was how we were going to handle the obvious heavy hurricane season
that is approaching in the context of major outbreaks of COVID in the gulf states that have the
lowest levels of vaccination and the highest levels of infection. I presented the epidemiology data
and Liz and Deanne presented the hurricane data. My impression was that the president was not
particularly happy with Deanne’s presentations since she was not able to give him the answer to
a lot of his questions. Nonetheless being the gentleman that he is he did not really act annoyed
with her although as I get to know his body language better I could sense that he was
disappointed.
As indicated above David Kessler and I and most recently with the support of Jeff have been
trying to push the concept of getting the US government to make a major investment in Lonza
company that makes the mRNA four Moderna. We're making some progress in the
implementation of the concept of the US government bankrolling Lonza to expand this capability
to supply billions of doses of vaccine to the developing world. We had been working on this in
collaboration with Peter Staley, James Krellenstein, and David Barr. Unfortunately, Peter in his
enthusiasm to get things done quickly, orchestrated a letter signed by 175 public health
advocates essentially criticizing the Biden administration for acting too slowly in getting vaccine
to the developing world. They sent the letter to the president simultaneously with sending it
to the Washington Post and my media friends Yasmeen Abutaleb and Dan Diamond wrote
an article in the Post indicating that David Kessler and I were working with them to get the
higher ups in the administration to agree with the plan but that we had not been successful.
Unfortunately, this may have blown our entire plan of getting this done under the radar screen. It
is likely that this could now interfere with what David and I were trying to do. Yasmeen called
several times for an interview; however, I did not see any purpose in getting involved in this
controversial issue and also she had already written the story. See below:
Wpost: ‘Act now’ on global vaccines to stop more-dangerous variants, experts warn Biden
Vivek called me tonight after resume call with Dawn O'Connell and told me that a number of
scientists and public health people that were originally on the advisory committee to Biden's
election group we're writing to Ron Klain urging the administration to fire Rochelle
Walensky as the CDC director. I believe this is very unfair since after I have spoken to her she
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
is really trying very hard to gain control of the agency and to change there are somewhat ossified
culture.
PRESS: MSNBC “Morning Joe” with Mika Brzezinski; Did Instagram and TikTok
interviews with “influencers” including Actor Edgar Ramirez, Kathleen Barnes, Jax
James, Merrick Hanna Chris Olsen/Ian Paget, Wisdom Kaye
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 <[email protected]>
Sent: Wednesday, August 11, 2021 8:47 AM
To: Kessler, David (HHS/IOS) <[email protected] >; Fauci, Anthony (NIH/NIAID) [E]
<[email protected]>
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.
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
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
August 12, 2021 – Global USA
Now averaging (7 day) >100,000 cases per day
Hospitaliations in children increasing per 100,000 population
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
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;
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
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;
August 13, 2021
Cases continue to surge
We had multiple zoom calls and conversations today concerning the proper approach to his
booster vaccinations. In addition, based on this submission to the FDA on data in diminished
response in the immune compromised, the ACIP recommended that people who are immune
compromised including transplant patients, cancer patients on chemotherapy, any patients on
severe immunosuppressive therapy, people with advanced HIV disease, and people with primary
immune deficiencies receive a booster dose. We also had considerable conversations about the
best way to roll out the recommendations to boost the entire population in an orderly fashion
starting likely sometime in mid to late September. The COVID team agrees that this is the way to
go; however, it must be done within the context of the FDA regulatory framework. I am pushing
my people who are doing clinical trials on booster doses to get data as quickly as possible to the
FDA and the CDC so that they can analyze it for the purpose of making policy. Jeff is very
sensitive to the fact that he does not want us to look like we have come in too late to the boosting
game. This is actually not the case since as mentioned above , if anything, the UK is actually
behind us. There will certainly be international concern by the fact that we in the USA are giving
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
boosts to otherwise healthy people while the rest of the world is lacking even their first boost .
However, the argument that I am giving is that the USA is donating more doses and money two
international vaccines for low and middle income countries then the entire rest of the world
combined . At this point we have contracted for 500 million doses to be distributed in the
following cadence: 200 million doses by the end of 2021 and 300 million doses before the first
half of 2022 ends . In addition, we have already given away 110 million doses to 60 countries.
This includes 80 million of our own doses. In addition, the USA has either given or pledged $4
billion to COVax.
There is an interesting concept that is heavily debated among us. Although we all agree that
we need to do as described above, we are not fully appreciative of what the decrease in incidents
of infection actually means if the current rate of hospitalization and death appears to remain
stable. Are we vaccinating people with a boost because we feel that ultimately those increases in
infection will lead to increases in hospitalization and deaths, or are we concerned that even if
vaccinated people get infected and spread the infection that we are trying to suppress
transmission in addition to serious disease. Stay tuned for how this all rolls out.
PRESS: WTOP with JJ Green; Twitter responses with WH Digital team; CBS Radio Los
Angeles; CBS Radio NYC; White House twitter with digital team;
August 14, 2021 – Global - USA – 36,300,000/618,600
140,000 cases in the USA today.
We had continued discussions today with Jeff and David Kessler as to how we are going to
deal with the activists (Peter Staley et al) in our attempts to cooperate with them in getting doses
to the developing world. We need to get them to understand that we are with them and trying to
expand the number of doses we give ; However, they need to understand that we have already
given more than the entire world combined. So they really need to recognize that we've done a
lot at the same time that they work with us to do even more rather than attacking us for not doing
enough.
Moderna has not acted in good faith. They have actually put in their patent application and
have explicitly said that Barney Graham, John Mascola, and Kizzy Corbett are not inventors of
the M RNA 1273 patent. This is absolutely outrageous and I have had conversations with
Francis Collins, Larry Tabak, and earlier this evening with Jeff indicating that we have to get a
heavy hitting law firm to argue our case. I suggested as did Jeff that we employ the firm of
Williams/Connelly to represent us.
We are planning to roll out next week the program of giving a booster shot to everyone starting
with those in long term care facilities and the elderly, but ultimately including everyone related
to their anniversary date of their last shot. Clearly, we will get both praise and criticism for this.
August 15, 2021 (Sunday) Heat wave throughout the country.
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
I had a very intensive day with the medical team trying to fashion to coherent message to
justify the announcement that we plan to make this week that we will be giving a booster
shot to everyone who wants one regardless of age or underlying condition. This has been a
very difficult situation since the data for diminution of efficacy regarding hospitalization and
death are unclear because of the confounding variables of some studies dominated by delta ,
some studies dominated by alpha , and some studies with a combination of both. In addition,
when we talk about hospitalizations , it is unclear from several of the studies whether those who
were hospitalized were almost exclusively the elderly and /or people with underlying conditions.
Jeff is bent on having a coherent sharp message about this when in fact that is very difficult to do
given the paucity of data. If we are too precise we will be called out because we cannot back it
with data. If we are general, Jeff feels that the public will be confused. I am trying to convince
him that it is OK to say that we do not know nor do we have all of the data to make a decision
and sometimes you have to make a clinical or public health decision just based on clinical
judgment. In this case the judgment is that delta is a very bad virus and even though we don't
have firm data yet that younger people are getting seriously ill, we don't want to be late to the
game. I used the metaphor of Wayne Gretzky who always said it is important to skate where the
puck will be rather than where the puck is. We do not wait until younger people start requiring
hospitalizations before we decide that we want to give them a boost. My job in all of this is to
give the immunological basis for providing a boost. Bottom line is that the controversy will be
not that we need to give a boost, but do we really need to give it to everyone instead of just to the
elderly and those who have underlying conditions. One of the most important aspects about all of
this is that when you boost someone with a third dose at about six months or so after the original
prime boost the level of antibody goes dramatically high and I believe that this would provide
durable protection against delta and any other variants that come along. My concern is that the
Medical Group will not articulate this concept well enough and I will have to be out there trying
to pick up the pieces as is usually the case.
Summary of what has been going on hat I might not have had he time to document. I am
more and more astounded by the fact that our society is so dystopic in that untruth and out and
out lies seemed to win the day . In addition, I am concerned that even good scientists playing a
game of using their longstanding concern with gain of function to call attention to this by what is
going on regarding the argument about the origin of the virus. There is no question in my mind
based on so many factors including history, molecular makeup with the virus, among others that
this virus naturally emerged from an animal reservoir. Yet , people like David Relman and others
are not realizing that by their focusing on the gain of function which they believe is what we
funded at Wuhan could possibly be the cause of SARS Co V2 when in fact they know that this is
molecularly impossible. I have evolved into something that would have been unimaginable
to me just a few years ago. There are some positive aspects to it ; However, for the most part I
feel like it is no longer me. I am now probably one of the most recognizable faces in the world.
Millions of people idolize me and the far right radical group absolutely hate me. I cannot go out
in public to a restaurant or even walk through a crowd since someone immediately recognizes
me and wants to take a picture or congratulate me or just say that they said hi to me. This is
driving my security group crazy as they are afraid fair among these legions of admirers will be
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
someone who wants to kill me. All of this together with the stress associated with the fact that
the president and others in the administration rely heavily on me four major decisions and I have
very little staff relatively speaking who could help me.
PRESS: CBS “Face the Nation” with Nancy Cordes
AUGUST 16, 2021
Pediatric hospitalizations surging:
Someone leaked our plan for boosters. The press are texting me all evening. I am not
answering.
PRESS:
August 17, 2021
There is a lot going on and a lot of moving parts. We have been working very hard on trying
to get a plan and a program out to deliver third boost shots to people who have received the
original two dose vaccine regimen for M RNA. This is a complicated issue because it appears
that the vaccines in the United states as well as globally particularly in places like Israel and
England among others are still holding strong and preventing hospitalization and deaths but there
is a dramatic diminution with the delta variant in protection against infection and symptomatic
disease. There is an inkling that we are starting to see increase in hospitalizations particularly in
Israel in vaccinated people. Jeff together with the White House team has been working on a plan
to be implemented starting September the 20th to get a third shot to everyone in a cadence
beginning with those who originally had received the vaccine first. These people are
fundamentally health care workers, the elderly, and people in long term care facilities and
nursing homes. The problem is the data that definitively show that we are seeing an increase in
hospitalizations with delta are not there yet. However , as I and others know from experience ,
when you are dealing with COVID-19 , particularly the delta variant, you may be behind the
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
curve by a few weeks at the time you realize you were behind the curve. I use the analogy of
skating to where the puck will be not where it is now . In this regard, there will be criticisms that
we acted too soon particularly since so many people around the world have not yet received any
vaccine. This is countered by the fact that the United states is doing more than the rest of the
world combined to get vaccine to lower middle income countries. There is an additional
complicating issue here in that Jeff is insisting that when we announced this, it looks like it is a
done deal and we are definitely going to do this . However, it really does depend on or
authorization from the FDA together with recommendation from the CDC via advice from the
ACIP. If we come out and definitively say we're going to do it prior to the FDA approval , it
looks like we have politically influencing the FDA. I am warning Jeff about this because even
though he is trying to do the right thing , we have to be careful that we don't look like we are
tipping the scales and overriding the FDA. Janet Woodcock is very concerned about this and I do
not blame her.
Another complicating issue is that last night someone leaked our plan to the press and although
we are going to make the announcement tomorrow the press is running wild with speculations
and partial data right now. I have not answered any press calls because I do not want to get
involved invalidating the breaking of a very strict code of silence. Shame on the person or
persons who leaked this period now we have to explain things without necessarily giving
everybody all the necessary information. In addition , we have faced with the usual problem of
the CDC not giving us all the information that we need and even continuing to refer two
embargoed MMWR papers to come out. We absolutely need to see those data if we are going to
defend our policy.
Email that I sent to Ian Sams:
From: Fauci, Anthony (NIH/NIAID) [E] <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 17, 2021 2:02 PM
To: Sams, Ian (HHS/ASPA) <[email protected] >; Kessler, David (HHS/IOS) < [email protected] >;
Murthy, Vivek (HHS/OASH) <[email protected] >; Collins, Francis (NIH/OD) [E]
<[email protected]>; Walensky, Rochelle (CDC/OD) <[email protected]>; Levine, Rachel (HHS/OASH)
<[email protected]>; Nunez-Smith, Marcella (OS/ASPR/IO) (CTR) <Marcella.Nunez-
[email protected] >
Cc: Phillips, Alexandria (HHS/OASH) <[email protected]>; Perry, Sherice (OS/IEA)
<[email protected]>
Subject: RE: Latest statement + Tough QA
Thanks, Ian. The following that is in the statement is a very important
part of the statement. Please make sure that it does not
disappear. “…once FDA conducts an independent evaluation and
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
determination of the safety and effectiveness of a third dose of the Pfizer
and Moderna mRNA vaccines and CDC’s Advisory Committee on
Immunization Practices (ACIP) issues formal recommendations.”
Best,
Tony
Anthony S. Fauci, MD
Director
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
Building 31, Room 7A-03
31 Center Drive, MSC 2520
National Institutes of Health
Bethesda, MD 20892-2520
Phone: (301) 496-2263
FAX: (301) 496-4409
E-mail: [email protected]
I called Janet Woodcock to encourage her to stick by her guns and do the FDA work quickly but
by the books. She is even concerned that some FDA whistleblower will tell the press that FDA
is being “pressured”.
Despite the fact that the leak has made things very complicated , we are putting the finishing
touches on our plan for the rollout of the booster statement tomorrow. After that I will brief the
president. This should be interesting since he cannot be in a good mood given the total disaster
that has gone on with the withdrawal from Afghanistan and the complete takeover by the
Taliban.
I had an incredible and stressful evening tonight on the phone multiple times with Jeff and
Rochelle and then later with John Mascola. Poor Rochelle! She had been telling all along to
Jeff that the acip would go along with what we are doing. Jeff wrote a speech for the president
that definitively said what we are doing. Now that the leak has occurred the acip is furious that
we have already decided what we want to do without even consulting them. Jeff is being very
rigid in getting a very clear crisp message of what the plan is and when Rochelle heard that
Natalie had asked her to put together a schedule of how to roll out the plan, she panicked since
this would actually pushed the acip over the line that they are being treated as a rubber stamp. I
called up Jeff and explained to him that we really need to pull back on the schedule issue . After
much discussion in which he got very agitated , but maintained his friendship and respect for me
we decided to call up Rochelle and Vivek and have a zoom conversation. He was furious with
her because he said that she kept on telling him that she had the acip in total alignment with what
we're doing and now all of a sudden the acip is a problem. I believe that her job is in danger. I
spent a lot of time on the phone trying to get Jeff to appreciate that we have got to stay within the
process of how recommendations are made and that we can do that at the same time ultimately
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
doing what we feel is right. I finally got him to listen to me and I had him change some wording
in the president's speech for tomorrow that would add a degree of flexibility to the fact that we
will ultimately get done what we want to do but that we would tip our hat to the
recommendations of the acip. After it was all over and at 10:15 PM Jeff called me up again to
see what my thoughts were. He had changed the POTUS comments to include the caveat that the
details are dependent on FDA approval and recommendations from the CDC’s advisors. He was
considerably calmed down and I went step by step with him and told him that we likely will be
able to pull this off and get it right without having the rest of the world think we were railroading
the acip which really was not what we wanted to do. He seemed OK with that. At the end of the
day, after the BLA, people and physicians will boost whoever they want to boos whenever they
want to.
PRESS: PBS South Florida TV; National Association of Black Journalists – Interview of
me and Cameron Webb by Dr. Ian Smith (Physician/journalist/author)
August 18, 2021 – Global - 208,500,000/4,400,000; USA – 37,100,000/621,300
Yesterday 180,000 cases. 7 day daily average >100,000
Had a very eventful and stressful day today; however things worked out well with the rollout
of the booster plan at the White House press conference. Following that I briefed the president
and VP in the Oval Office together with Vivek, Jeff, Rochelle, Berchara, and Marcella, and
Natalie. Only Vivek and I in person. The president and vice president asked good questions ,
particularly with regard to the president's concern that this is contingent upon FDA and acip
recommendations . He picked up right away on the concern that Jeff had that we needed to do
this and make sure that we don't have a stumbling block with the FDA and acip. The one issue
that could arise is that the FDA may feel that the risk benefit ratio of boosting young kids 18
years old and there abouts may not be favorable in the context of the risk of myocarditis
balanced against the risk of their winding up in the hospital as a result of COVID. The president
is having a bad few days given what is going on in Afghanistan with the Taliban having taken
over the country in just a couple of days following withdrawal of USA troops.
As expected the response to the rollout of the booster plan was very mixed, and quite
understandably. The CDC messaging all along has been dysfunctional . I do not think that
this is the fault of Rochelle, but just the function of the culture at CDC where they hang on to
data without letting anybody know about it until it's ready to be published. We had another
instance where Rochelle was very reticent to show any of the medical team what was in the
upcoming MMWRs that actually impact greatly the booster roll out because in typical fashion it
was “embargoed “. One cannot imagine how ridiculous this is that a public health agency is
acting like an academic department in a Medical Center where the most important thing is
publishing data as opposed to guiding public health decisions. I take this opportunity now to talk
about it , but this has been a chronic problem literally for the decades that I have been the
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
director of NIAID. Of note, Yasmeen Abutaleb wrote an article this morning in the
Washington Post in which she described this exact problem. (see below).
Getting back do the concept of boosters, it is very clear that it is the right thing to do . However,
given the fluid nature of the situation , we had to make some “majestic leaps” by anticipating that
something was going to happen such as diminution of vaccine protection and acting on this now
even though the data we're not absolutely firm. A lot of people got bent out of shape about this,
but they are not responsible for the public health and they could guess and say whatever they
want as have many “talking heads” with impunity because if they are right they look great but if
they are wrong , which they usually are, then no one really cares because they have no authority
or responsibility.
PRESS: NBC “Nightly News” with Lester Holt; CBS “Evening News” with David
Begnaud; MSNBC “The Reid Out” with Joy Reid; CNN with Chris Cuomo;
The Post's View
Opinion: The covid-19 boosters have the same
goals as the first shots: Survival and resilience
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
Washington Post: Fears over rising illness and death
from the delta variant fuel Biden
administration push for boosters
Health officials expected to announce recommendation
Wednesday that Americans get extra shots
By
Tyler Pager , Laurie McGinley, Dan Diamond and Lena H. Sun
August 19, 2021 – Global USA
Cases recently >200,000/day weekly average >100,000
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
I just had a good conversation, my first conversation with New York State Lieutenant
governor Kathy Hochul. Starting on Monday August 23rd she will be the governor of New
York State replacing Andrew Cuomo who resigned affective August 23rd related to the sexual
harassment scandal in which he was involved. The conversation with Kathy was very positive
and she is very interested in working very closely with me and getting advice from me regarding
how New York State should handle the explosive outbreak of the delta variant.
Much press (see below) regarding the announcement yesterday on booster shots.
I received an email late in the evening from Elizabeth Alexander the communications
director for the first lady Jill Biden. She wanted me to edit an opinion piece that the first lady
was writing for Time magazine . I spent about an hour late at night doing it for her.sorry one
second
PRESS: Another hour long TikTok/Instagram session with young “influencers” who
amazingly have millions of followers; did 6 Regional TV hits at request of the White House:
WSVN Miami with Lynn Martinez; WTVT Tampa with Craig Patrick; WTMJ Milwaukee
with Charles benson; DBI Radio with Rene Miller; Univision (National) with Janet
Rodriguez; Telemundo (National) Lourdes….; MSNBC with Andrea Mitchell; CNBC
“Closing Bell” with Sara Eisen and Wilfred Frost; CNN with Jake Tapper;
August 20, 2021
Cases still increasing:
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
I had a conversation today with the Minister of Health of Gabon – Dr. Guy Patrick Obiang
Ndong. The purpose of the meeting was for me to give him an idea of how we handle COVID
in the United states and to answer some of his questions particularly around the area of
misinformation and disinformation that has led to vaccine hesitancy which as it turns out is a
major problem in southern Africa including his own country. We had a good conversation
moderated by Ms. Anne Soy, a journalist from BBC. The MOH did not mention it but I'm sure
there is this feeling of concern that we are planning to give out third shot boosts at the same time
that Africa has very very little vaccine. I have explained on several of the TV shows and imprint
that the USA has already given more doses to LMICs then the entire rest of the world combined
(see above). In addition, we plan to give hundreds of millions more and they are also working
with Peter Staley and the activists to provide major increases of doses to the rest of the world
(see below ).
There is still ongoing controversy among some people regarding whether the idea about
giving a boost was justified by the data. I had a good conversation with Paul Offit who fields
that we may have jumped the gun. Vincent Racaniello has written in his blog that he does not
think that the boosters are justified. They are all waiting to see data regarding an increase in
hospitalization as a result of delta and waning immunity. I still believe given the Israel data that
boosters in their country are already showing a significant decreases in the number of
breakthrough infections that we did the right thing in making our decision. In addition, those
who object seemed to forget about the fact that short of hospitalizations a lot of people get
seriously ill with symptoms and signs of long COVID that can be very troublesome. The
boosters are safe and to put it in plain terms it can help, and it certainly cannot hurt.
August 21, 2021
184,000 cases today!
August 22, 2021 (Sunday) – (no shows for me today – predominantly Vivek Murthy)
Had a zoom call today with Jeff and the medical team planning how we can roll out the
booster situation putting all the pieces together with the FDA, the CDC, and the acip . We
also heard that FISA will get it's BLA on Monday August 23rd. One of the important parts of the
discussion was my relating data that we have received from the Minister of Health of Israel. The
data clearly show that hospitalizations for people with two doses of vaccine are going up
significantly particularly among the elderly and those with underlying conditions . In addition,
they are showing that the efficacy of two doses against infection and symptomatic disease has
dramatically diminished, and when you give the third dose boost, this turns it around
dramatically and diminishes the breakthrough infections. These data are well ahead of the
somewhat disjointed data from the CDC. However what it does do is_that we are correct in
asking for boosters essentially for everyone.
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
In addition, I am going to pursue with calls to Peter Staley and others (Krellenstein and
Barr) as well as a follow up call with Jeff , David Kessler, and me to plan a more coherent
strategy about getting doses led by the United states to the rest of the world. The plan to do
this would be to increase dramatically the production capacity of the companies particularly
moderna even if we have to deal with Lonza directly since Lonza is a major multilocation
company that is producing the vaccine for Moderna. Stay tuned.
In a follow up conversation with Jeff and David Kessler, Jeff was amenable to pursuing the
plan of Peter and the activist group ; however, he wanted to make sure that we got the
situation with the Moderna booster straight before we started to go to war with Moderna to get
them to cooperate with us on the Lonza deal. I believe that Jeff is serious about this and we may
in fact go that route once we get the approvals to use moderna as part of the booster plan. In this
regard, Tom Frieden call me up tonight urging me to push ahead with the “nuclear option “a
forcing moderna to cooperate in expanding capacity for the developing world. Tom feels that
moderna or a bunch of used car salesman and he does not trust them at all. He has stated , which
is partially true, that they would be nothing without the NIH and the federal government.
In this regard, Beth Cameron from NSC wanted me to look over a summit plan for addressing
the global issue of COVID. I wrote back to her and emphasized that I feel strongly that the
United states should take a PEPFAR-type approach in assuming any leadership role in getting
doses to low and middle income countries.
The Israeli data are emerging as extremely important since it is clear , as they are about a
month and a half ahead of us and everything, that the vaccine efficacy is diminishing
significantly overtime against infection and symptomatic disease. However, unlike the situation
here in the USA, the Israelis are starting to see a diminution in protection against hospitalization
and death. This is exactly what we have predicted in our decision to move ahead with the booster
program. Furthermore, the Israelis are starting to see a very positive effect following giving
boosters to over 1,000,000 people in the sense that the number of infections have dramatically
diminished in association with the administration of the boosters.
August 23, 2021 – Global USA
BLA granted for Pfizer by the FDA!!
I just did a site visit to the Department of State facility that does the screening for
diplomatic pouches and mail. This is the facility that has been screening my mail ever since I
had the anthrax scare with the power in one of my letters literally one year ago four days from
now. Brett Rowland arrange for me to go there to thank the people in the facility and to
encourage them in their work. They were very grateful but I took the time to visit them and there
was the usual selfies galore.
Another important issue today was that we were told by Larry Tabak at the state department
wanted us to remove any names of people in Afghanistan that we are interacting with through
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
grants or contracts from our public facing databases and websites. The reason for this is that we
are concerned that the Taliban will use the websites to identify people in Afghanistan with
connections to the United states and would then assassinate them. It is very clear that things are
not going well following the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. The Taliban has easily
taken over the country and now we are having trouble getting Americans as well as Afghanistan
allies such as interpreters out of Kabul safely. It's a very bad time for the Biden administration
since they are being severely criticized for not having the right intelligence capability to indicate
to them that the Taliban would take over so quickly without allowing time for us to withdraw our
own personnel in an orderly fashion. What we did was withdraw the military first thinking that
we would have ample time to withdraw diplomats and other personnel safely . Obviously this is
not the case and it is still a very tenuous situation in Afghanistan.
PRESS: Podcast 70 Over 70; NPR “All Things Considered” with Mary Louise Kelly;
Podcast “A Starting Point” with Mark Kassen and Chris Evans; PBS ”NewsHour” with
Judy Woodruff; MSNBC “Peacock” with Mehdi Hasan;
August 24, 2021 – Global USA
Cases, hospitalizations and deaths (to a lesser extent) continue to soar.
More conspiracy theory like letters keep coming in from congressmen and senators trying
to link us to the origin of COVID-19. This is an amazing and unbelievable waste of our time
and has no bearing whatsoever on what we have actually done with that minor, minor $125,000
grant to the Wuhan institute of virology. It is totally mind boggling how they are distorting the
truth to try and distract from the reality of what actually had happened during the Trump
administration where he lied and underplayed the outbreak.
Strange but not surprising thing happened as a result of several of the shows that I was on
over the last 24 hours. On several of the TV shows I was talking mostly about the favorable
aspect of the final approval of the BLA for Pfizer. However, in one of the conversations someone
asked when I thought we were to get back to normal. I gave the usual caveats but then went on to
say if we get as many people vaccinated as we possibly can as quickly as we possibly can we
could diminish the number of cases and if we get through the winter which will be complicated
by influenza and other respiratory infections, then I believe we could get back to some form of
real normality by the spring of 2022. Much to my surprise I got a call this morning from Jeff
clearly upset because the news media had jumped on that and said that Biden has been saying
we're going to get out of this soon and Fauci who knows what's going on is saying it's going to
be into next year. I am getting a little bit concerned, even though I understand Jeff's concern
about the distortion of a message for a political purpose, that we may be tailoring a message that
is not totally aligned with the truth. In fact, I believe we would be very lucky if we're back to
normal by the spring of 2022. I told Jeff that from now on when asked to predict I will just say
we don't know. This might actually not go over very well with the press anyway, but that is what
I will say. Of note shortly after my call with Jeff, Courtney Rowe called me up in a much more
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
conciliatory manner saying she understands how these things get taken out of context and said
that she heard it a lot more the way I meant it; however, we really need to be careful that people
would be distorting our message. I agree with her.
PRESS: CBS “This Morning” with Gayle King; NBC “Today”; MSNBC “Morning Joe”;
Telemundo TV Hoy Dia with Adamari Lopez;
August 25, 2021 – Global USA
Cases continue > 120,000/day
Had an extremely interesting Zoom meeting yesterday with the Israeli Minister of Health
and several Israeli scientists. The Israelis have always been about a month or so ahead of the
USA temporarily with regard to the dynamics of the outbreak, the percentage of population
vaccinated, and their recent decision to provide booster shots as third doses first to their elderly
and then to progressively younger people. On the zoom call that Danny Douek and Bob Seder
helped organize since Danny spent a year sabbatical in Israel, it became clear that's what we
suspected was actually true. On the call for the Israelis were: Nachman Ash, Minister of Health
of Israel; Sharon Alroy-Preis – Director of Public Health Services for Israel; Ran Achitov –
Senior Advisor to the Israel Prime Minister Naftali Bennett; Ron Milo – Weizmann Institute;
Boaz Lev. The Israelis were seeing a gradual waning of protection of the Pfizer vaccine over a
few months to the point of protection against infection and mild disease was dramatically
diminished after several months. Importantly, they found that the protection against severe
disease leading to hospitalization also significantly decreased. This latter point is extremely
important because the data from the USA cohorts was suggesting that But did not definitively
show it. In addition, they gave booster shots to about 1.6 million people and have shown that the
booster shots dramatically reconstitute the protection against infection. clinical disease and
hospitalization. Furthermore, they found a decrease in the Ro strongly suggesting that the
booster also diminished transmission. These findings completely validate I would decision to
begin giving boosters here in the United States. I briefed Jeff on this last night and we will
arrange an additional call with the Israelis including John Mascola, David Kessler, and others
involved in our program.
PRESS:
The Times of Israel:
Health Ministry officials said to update Fauci
on COVID booster shot campaign
Today, 9:02 pm
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
•
US top infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci testifies before the Senate Health, Education, Labor,
and Pensions Committee, on Capitol Hill in Washington, on July 20, 2021. (J. Scott Applewhite, Pool/AP)
The Kan public broadcaster reports that top Health Ministry officials, including director-general
Nachman Ash, held a virtual meeting with Dr. Anthony Fauci to discuss Israel’s COVID-19 vaccine booster
shot campaign.
The report says that the Israeli officials updated Fauci, who is director of the National Institute of Allergy
and Infectious Diseases and US President Joe Biden’s chief medical advisor, on figures showing that the
third vaccine dose provides increased protection against infection and serious morbidity.
The US is planning to begin administering booster shots next month.
August 26, 2021 - Global – 213,400,000/4,460,000; USA – 38,300,000/631,400
Cases still soaring
The people in the White House medical team are all excited now about the Israeli data, and they want
me to arrange for resume between members of our White House team and our Israeli colleagues. I would
be happy to do this since I want them to appreciate the extraordinary data that the Israelis have.
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
PRESS: Washington Post: A science in the shadows
Controls on ‘gain of function’ experiments with supercharged
pathogens have been undercut despite concerns about lab
leaks
By
David Willman
and
Madison Muller
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.
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
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)
August 28, 2021 (Saturday) –
Zoom meetings with Jeff - There is concern about sticking with the eight month projection for
the beginning of boosting. Jeff is adamant not to waver on the 8 month projection even though it
is clear from the data in Israel as well as from the general knowledge that in Israel there is
waning of protection as early as five months. I will be on all the Sunday shows tomorrow and I
will have to walk a tightrope to stick with eight months on the one hand and leave the flexibility
for earlier than eight months on the other.
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
The intelligence community report on the origins came out and in some respects it was good
news in that they felt fairly confident that it was not a bioweapon nor that it was bioengineered.
They still left open the possibility that it could be a lab leak ; However, more elements of the
intelligence community felt that it was a natural occurrence compared to the single component
(FBI) who seemed to feel strongly that it was a lab leak , although this is based on no data at all.
The reaction to the report was rather typical with Bob Garry saying that he was pleased that it
ruled out bio engineering and David Relman making the incredible statement in a Nature news
article that he would like to see all of the records of the NIH in their dealing with Chinese
scientists. Truly amazing! There is no doubt that he has an agenda here and that is unfortunate.
August 29, 2021 (Sunday) –
Cases continue to surge with increases in hospitalizations as well as deaths. The cases have
been between 100,000 and 150,000 for several days in a row now.
Thus far the piece by David Willman has not received much attention. It has only appeared
online and I expected it to be on the front page of the Sunday Washington Post and in fact it was
not there it is possible that the situation in Afghanistan as well as the horror of the upcoming
hurricane Ida has pushed this out of the news.
I will have to navigate all of the difficult questions today since the White House is putting me out
on all the Sunday shows.
The boosts that the Israelis are giving or having a profoundly positive effect on deminishing the
number of cases that are severe . See below:
Israel: Two weeks after the third dose campaign, and for the past two weeks, there is a
decrease in the fraction of cases who become seriously ill https://bit.ly/3gKS7fY
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
PRESS: CNN “State of the Union” with Jake Tapper; ABC “This Week” with Martha
Raddatz; NBC “Meet the Press” with Chuck Todd;
August 30, 2021
>150,000 cases today
Did podcast with American Muslim Health Professionals
Jeff continues to be frustrated with Rochelle. she does not seem to have the control over her
agency that Jeff would like to have her execute. He is frustrated that she doesn't tell anybody
what's coming out in MMWR as if it were a private journal as opposed to what it really is - the
journal of the CDC. In addition, Jeff is very concerned that she is out of touch with what goes on
in the acip and in other various components that interact with the CDC. The other night I had to
talk him down from feeling like he had to let her go. I continue to have faith in her and that she is
a very good person but she is dealing with a rigid and secretive organization that has been that
way decades before she arrived.
PRESS: Sinclair TV; TikTok with influencers including Grammy Award-winner (4X)
Jason Isbell;
August 31, 2021 - Global -216,900,000/4,500,000; USA – 39,100,000/637,400
Trouble at the FDA. Today it was announced that Marion Gruber and Phil Krause will leave
CBER at the FDA. The reason being given is that they are upset that decisions have been made
by acip and by the White House that should have been made first at the level of the FDA. This
has been superimposed upon the fact that the administration is having a hard time making a
decision about who the next FDA commissioner will be. There is pushback from some senators
particularly Joe Manchin (D-WV) against Janet Woodcock even though she should be the top
candidate. The loss of Marion and Phil is a big blow to the FDA.
More drama with the FDA CDC relationship. Another late night call from Larry Horowitz
telling me that the CDC with Rochelle want the ACIP to discuss publicly data that might confuse
the issue since the FDA has confidential data that might change the direction of the discussion.
Somehow or other the CDC does not fully appreciate that traditionally their ACIP working group
was allowed to discuss in private data related to a particular study, but they would not publicly
discuss it until the FDA weighed in on it. As it currently is rolling out, Rochelle seems somehow
influenced perhaps by Amanda Fine who is a CDC employee but who is the executive secretary
of the ACIP. They want to publicly discuss data before the FDA weighs in with data that they
have that is confidential. Bottom line is that if the ACIP publicly discusses incomplete data,
when the FDA weighs in with the confidential data it would cause a lot of confusion. This is
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
driving Jeff crazy and again he is on the verge of firing Rochelle. Again, Jeff is asking me to
help solve the problem by speaking to Rochelle and explaining to her why it is so important to do
things in the traditional format of giving the FDA the chance to make decisions about data before
the ACIP ways in with recommendations concerning those data to the CDC. I called up Peter
Marks last night and Peter feels that the CDC and the ACIP are breaking tradition here and Peter
feels strongly that it is OK for the working groups acip to discuss data so long as they do not do
so publicly before the FDA opines from a regulatory standpoint.
PRESS:
September 1, 2021 Global – 217,600,000/4,500,000; USA – 39,300,000/638,700
I spoke to Rochelle this AM. I tried to explain to her the dilemma that we are in with this
disagreement between CDC /ACIP and the FDA where Jeff agrees that the acip should not opine
before the FDA rules. Clearly, Jeff is expecting me to be the arbitrator here and fix this. Jeff is
very concerned that the acip will come out with recommendations contrary to what we had
already planned and what the FDA will allow and that this will make it look like we are “the
gang that could not shoot straight “. Rochelle feels that we are all going to be in the same place
anyway but Jeff is concerned to the contrary. Jeff asked me to broker a meeting between senior
CDC and senior FDA officials to see if we can settle this dispute regarding the role of acip.
PRESS: CNN “The Situation Room” with Wolf Blitzer
September 2, 2021 – Global - USA -
Weekly average 149,000 cases/day
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
Important reflection about “controlling the message” - I thought I would make this comment
now since it is something that has been ongoing for some time. It relates to the fact that this
administration particularly in the form of Jeff does not at all want to interfere with the science or
dictate what the science should be saying. This is completely different from the interference with
science and the actual contradiction of science that was so rampant during the Trump
administration. However, in the situation where we came out with the statements that we should
begin boosters on the week of the 20th of September and at 8 months from the time individuals
finish their original immunization regimen, it is clear that the timing was not totally science
driven . It was logistically driven. In other words, we found out in late July that it was clear
based on the hint of what we were seeing here in the United States and what the Israelis were
seeing that we would need to boost. From a logistics standpoint we could not begin to do that
until September which would put it eight months following the time that the first people got their
vaccination in January. And so the eight month timeframe was not based on any biological or
clinical science. It was based purely on logistics. And yet whenever we have a discussion Jeff
insists that we stay with eight months because the science dictates that it is 8 months. That is just
not true. It very well may be and in fact it looks like it should be earlier, such as six months. The
reason Jeff did not want to change or veer away from 8 months is that he did not want it to seem
that we were saying one thing on one day, and a week or so later we would change it, for
example changing from eight months to six months. I consider this a fixation on messaging
which is really unnecessary. I would have said we chose eight months because it was already
eight months from the time that people got their first vaccination. Jeff was afraid that we would
get criticized that we should have been doing it earlier if we switch from eight to six months. I
would have said what the truth was that we picked eight months at first because that was the
logistic reason and as soon as we found out that it was better to do it at six months we would
then change to six months. It is the truth and there's nothing wrong with that.
Important principals meeting today in the SCIF. the meeting was led by Jake Sullivan of
NSC . The subject matter was how the United states could take a leadership role in the global
response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, the question arose about how we can get
foreign countries including China and India to participate in the process of getting doses to low
and middle-income countries. A number of the principals weighed in including Samantha
Powers, Tony Blinken, and others. Although I have a keen interest in this concept and I have
been discussing it in detail with Jeff and with Peter Staley and David Kessler, I did not
preemptively make any comments since they did not ask me to. However, in the future I will
give my opinion as how we can best accomplish this goal.
Sept. 3, 2021 – Global USA
Continued tension between CDC /Rochelle and Jeff concerning the rollout of the booster
program. The consistent problem is the concern that Jeff has that the ACIP might come out with
significant variance from what we had planned. Jeff does not want to control the science , but he
clearly wants to make sure that we do not have a garbled message. Going back over this in time,
Jeff wanted to get out a crisp message of what we will do with boosters because he felt that if we
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
did not, the country would say that we were behind the curve and that we allowed people to die
without getting boosted. For that reason we put out the statement that we have a plan to boost.
Now among some it appears that the White House and the medical team haver gotten ahead of
the science and the usual process , which actually is not the case.
The National Geographic documentary “FAUCI” came out yesterday at Telluride Film
Festival. I am understandably concerned that the radical right and others who hate me will
consider the film self-aggrandizing. However, it is very clear that I did not solicit this film. it
started off as a film about HIV driven by Janet Tobias. At the onset Glenda Gray and I were
featured people in the film centered around HIV vaccines. When the producers that Janet met
with saw some of the filmed material they felt that it would be better to do a film about me
focusing on the concept of “The Public Servant”. When National Geographic took over, they
made it a very polished documentary which was not at all a hero worship of me but was a
realistic portrayal of the stress and strain and ups and downs of what I have been through with
multiple outbreaks, particularly HIV and COVID. Having said that the film will likely be praised
by many but also used by some to continue to attack me. Such as life.
Participated in “The European House” Ambrosetti Conference in Lake Como (virtually)
with panelists Kai-fu Lee, Stephane Bancel and moderated by Mariya Gabriel
Difficulties setting in with the booster rollout. As I suspected it is not going to be a smooth
rollout of all three companies being able to provide boosters by September the 20th. One of the
key obstacles has been Moderna who is insisting on making their booster dose 50 micrograms.
Given the fact that everything else has been done with 100 micrograms this will cause a delay by
at least a few weeks for the rollout of the Moderna product. Therefore, this will lead to a
disjointed program. Jeff is not happy, but it is what it is.
PRESS: Podcast with Andy Slavitt; Canadian Broadcast TV; MSNBC with Chris Hayes
September 4, 2021 – Global - USA – 39,800,000/644,800
Still a fair amount of confusion and concern about the rollout of the booster program.
David Kessler comes down hard on the fact that the ACIP cannot be out of sync with the FDA. If
the FDA says that boosters are OK for people 18 and older, David feels it is not appropriate for
the ACIP to restrict it to 65 years of age and older. Obviously, Jeff is upset by what has gone on
since this is what he has tried to avoid.
September 5, 2021- Global USA
Very nice thing happened tonight. Jeff called me by phone just to thank me for everything that
I am doing. He read the transcripts of my appearances on the Sunday shows and wanted to tell
me how grateful he was for the fact that I've been doing this for such a long time, much longer
than any of the others , and he thought that it would be important for me to know that everybody
appreciates what I'm doing.
PRESS: CBS “Face the Nation”; CNN with Jim Acosta
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
September 6, 2021 - Global USA
Jeff brought over my house this evening the POTUS speech for Wednesday to have me
check for any issues or inaccuracies. I made a few edits, but nothing substantial.
September 7, 2021 – Global USA
Cases averaging >150,000/day.
Going back and forth with FDA (Peter Marks) about whether there will be enough safety
data on young people to justify boosters for everyone. Peter is aligned with me. I feel that if
the safety data holds we should definitely give boosts to everyone at every age. I do not believe
that you have to show a diminution in protection against hospitalization in order to trigger a
booster. No way in a clinical trial would you require hospitalization to be a primary endpoint.
We need to prevent symptomatic disease in everyone as well as preventing the spread of
infection. That is why we need a booster for everyone . I have said it before , and I will say it
now that I feel the proper regimen for COVID-19 vaccinations should be a prime followed in
four weeks by a boost followed and five to seven months buy a third shot boost.
PRESS: CNN “New Day” with Jim Sciutto; NPR “Morning Edition” with Rachel Martin;
La Stampa (Italian TV); New York Times Podcast with Apoorva Mandavilli
September 8, 2021
I had an interesting visit today in the Oval Office with President Biden. I was there to brief
him about the mu variant as well as to go over his six-point speech that he is going to be
delivering tomorrow. Clearly, President Biden is troubled by getting the right message to the
American people. He is concerned that people would be under the impression that we will never
get out of the oppression of this pandemic. And so, he struggled with the words in his upcoming
speech which I had the opportunity over the last few days to help edit. He was struggling with
the issue of how we can say that the unvaccinated people or an impediment to where we want to
go without discouraging the vaccinated people from feeling that even though they are vaccinated
they are powerless to be able to lead a normal existence so long as the unvaccinated people are
continuing to propagate the spread of the virus. I suggested to him that instead of saying that the
25% of the population that are unvaccinated are hindering the 75% of the population that are
vaccinated , he should focus on the fact that the unvaccinated people are not harming the
vaccinated people physically but they are preventing us from returning to a normal life which at
the end of the day is a negative issue for the 75% of the population who are vaccinated. It is a
complicated message, and he is struggling with it . I am convinced that he is an extremely
sincere and good person who wants to do the right thing.
September 9, 2021 – Global – 222,400,000/4,600,000; USA – 40,500,000/652,500
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
>160,000 infections today
President gave his national speech today on the 6th part plan to combat the delta variant. As
mentioned above I played a role and editing his speech and in discussing yet with the president
himself yesterday as well as with Jeff and the White House team.
PRESS: Podcast with David Rubenstein; Fireside chat with The Boston Globe; NBC
Nightly News with Lester Holt; PBS NewsHour with Judy Woodruff; CNN “AC360” with
Anderson Cooper;
Sept. 10, 2021
PRESS: NBC News Now (Online TV) with Savannah Sellers; Regional TV -Raleigh-
Durham (Jonah Kaplan); St. Louis (Cory Stark); Little Rock, AR (Mitch McCoy); “The
Skimm (Alex Carr); Politica Ya Unvision (TSi-Tsi-Ki Felix); Telemondo (Julio Vaquiero)
Great review of the documentary “FAUCI”:
The Heavy Burden of Being Dr. Anthony Fauci
MISGUIDED HATE
The new documentary “Fauci” follows the infectious-disease expert—the COVID-19 adviser to Trump
and Biden—throughout the pandemic, probing his deepest thoughts and fears.
Nick Schager
Updated Sep. 10, 2021 5:28AM ET / Published Sep. 10, 2021 4:51AM ET
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
National Geographic for Disney+
“It reduces my trust in humanity” is how National Institute of Health (NIH) nurse and bioethicist Dr.
Christine Grady describes her feelings about the abuse heaped upon her husband, Dr. Anthony Fauci, in
Fauci.
For those who’ve grown frustrated with their unvaccinated fellow citizens’ egotism, stupidity, and
recklessness, it’s a familiar and relatable sentiment, and one that colors John Hoffman and Janet Tobias’
documentary (in select theaters Sept. 10) about the director of the National Institute of Allergy and
Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden. Driven by interviews with
Fauci himself, it’s an insightful portrait of a man who’s dedicated his career to helping solve some of the
world’s most serious disease-related crises, as well as a celebration of the selfless courage, compassion,
and open-mindedness of a physician who’s stood tall in the face of unjust vilification and threats.
Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, and Lou Dobbs (remember him?) all appear in Fauci, slamming the
doctor in various disgusting ways and, in the process, stirring up opposition to the very figure most
responsible for guiding the nation through the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. When Fauci describes
recently opening an envelope that covered him in white powder, and the immediate thoughts that ran
through his head—is this a hoax, anthrax or ricin?—Hoffman and Tobias’ film underlines the constant
and immediate danger that Fauci is now in, thanks to a percentage of the population that views him as
the embodiment of both the pandemic and the social restrictions required to mitigate it. He’s at the
center of a Republican-led maelstrom born from ignorance and insanity, and as he remarks about the
global catastrophe that’s still unfolding, “I think we’re going to get through it, but we’re going to get
through it in spite of this divisiveness, and this politicization. We’re not going to get through it because
of it.”
Fauci’s opinion is offered up in the context of Fauci ’s look at the 1980s-1990s AIDS crisis that consumed
the doctor, and which was finally wrestled under control via a combination of good medicine, staunch
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
activism, and two opposing sides learning that collaboration was more productive than combativeness.
Peter Staley and other AIDS activists from that era speak candidly about their fight for AIDS attention
and action, primarily through the Larry Kramer-led AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP), which
aggressively made noise in public and scientific spaces in order to oppose prejudice and demand help.
Convinced that the government wasn’t doing enough to research and treat the fatal disease—which was
largely decried as an affliction that plagued only gay men and women—they saw Fauci as a bureaucrat
who didn’t care about the sick and the suffering, and castigated him accordingly.
As Fauci himself explains in a lengthy interview that forms the core of Fauci , he heard that
condemnation but soldiered on anyway. Breakthroughs regarding the identification of AIDS as a virus,
and how to effectively stymie its growth through a cocktail of drugs, were earned through countless
hours of work, and in an environment that became increasingly hostile thanks to the fury of those who
were losing loved ones to the disease, and vehement that more could be done to save them. In what
would be a turning point in the AIDS fight, in Fauci’s life, and in the history of medical science, Fauci
chose to listen to those voices, attending an ACT UP meeting where he went toe-to-toe with his critics,
and then speaking on their behalf at a 1990s AIDS conference in San Francisco. In doing so, he charted a
new course in which the experiences and input of subjects were taken into greater consideration during
clinical trials.
Fauci makes plain the parallels between Fauci’s “bookending” battles against AIDS and COVID-19, along
the way depicting a man who’s given his life to the investigation and treatment of the world’s worst
ailments. Sandwiched in between those two all-caps epidemics were his clashes with SARS, Swine flu,
MERS and Ebola, against which he led the charge. In a telling moment in Hoffman and Tobias’ non-
fiction biopic, Fauci says that he sought to destigmatize Ebola by hugging recovered patient Nina Pham
at a press conference, and such leadership-through-example is again seen in a late clip of him receiving
the COVID-19 vaccine on a stage in front of cameras. Time and again, the individual presented by the
film is one who puts others first and takes risks in order to guide and reassure the American public.
“Time and again, the individual presented by the film is one who puts others first and takes risks in order
to guide and assuage the American public.”
He’s also a scientific titan who, having served as adviser to seven presidents (beginning with Ronald
Reagan), isn’t afraid to deliver unpleasant truths that many—including his bosses—don’t necessarily
want to hear (or, at least, don’t want to hear said into a microphone). Clips of Fauci ruffling Trump’s
feathers by pushing back on his hydroxychloroquine nonsense, and setting out a realistic timetable for a
vaccine, reconfirm this point, painting him as an honest, candid grown-up in a milieu that’s full of self-
interested officials who’d prefer to tell people what they want to hear. It’s clear that he’s made mistakes
over the course of his tenure; The New York Times global health reporter Apoorva Mandavilli highlights,
for example, Fauci’s confusing mask messaging. Yet the fact that Fauci has now been labeled all manner
of undeserved things by right-wing anti-science loons—at great emotional cost to him, his wife
Christine, and their three daughters—only accentuates his bravery, resilience, and staunch adherence to
reason and evidence.
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
Since no amount of logical arguments, cajoling or bribery will change the minds of zealous conspiracy
theorists, Fauci probably won’t convince skeptics that the NIH bigwig is a paragon of public service.
Nonetheless, through a mix of archival footage and interviews that smoothly segue between the past
and present, Hoffman and Tobias’ documentary proves a tribute to a legitimate national hero, one
whose ambition and resolve are as great as his empathy and thoughtfulness. Even when it skews a bit
too heavily toward lionization, the lasting impression left by Fauci is that we’re lucky to have this 80-
year-old man on our side.
Sept. 11, 2021
Increases in cases starting to taper. Still 150,000-ish, but hospitalizations and deaths
decreasing slightly from prior week
20th anniversary of 9/11 - Multiple memorials occurring in New York , Pennsylvania , and at
the Pentagon. Starting with the president’s announcement of the six point plan yesterday, there
has been the expected pushback and objection from Republican congressmen and senators.
In addition, There appeared yesterday in the publication “Intercept” a story about the typical
gain of function issue regarding NIAID granting and the Wuhan lab. It resulted from the
publication through FOIA of a progress report from the laboratory. It alluded to the possibility of
gain of function . This created and expected firestorm of tweets that I had lied to the Congress
and that gain of function actually took place and I covered it up. This has gained some
momentum in the fringe press but nothing at all from the standard press.
Sept. 13, 2021 – Global USA
An article appeared today in The Lancet written by Phil Krause, Marion Gruber (FDA)
and people from WHO. It was a bit of a revolt on the part of the FDA and WHO who wrote in
the article that they do not believe there is enough scientific evidence to do boosters . This is
clearly sour grapes on the part of the FDA who feel that they are being pressured to approve
boosters. However, if they look at the data from the CDC as well as from Israel it will be very
clear that boosters are needed and greatly enhanced the waning response from the original
vaccine. Janet Woodcock is very upset that the FDA people did this without clearing the article
through the usual channels. There seems to be a couple of camps forming now with one feeling
they should not be boosters , mostly because the developing world does not have easy access to
vaccines. I have been stressing that it is possible to do both , namely, you can provide boosts for
your own citizens at the same time as providing doses of vaccine to low and middle income
countries. In this regard the USA is making major contributions to getting doses to the
developing world. This includes already distributing 130 million doses to 90 countries and
providing 500 million doses between now and the first half of 2022. In addition we have given
$4 billion to CoVAX. Furthermore, I am working with Jeff and the White House to plan a
PEPFAR-like program to get doses to the developing world
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
PRESS: Taped “The Daily Show” with Trevor Noah – to air tomorrow; Newsy TV
Interview;
Sept. 14, 2021
Moderna presented to us (Medical Team + other interested parties) their data on the open
label study involving the crossover from their phase three trial. Consistent with the data
from Pfizer they see a waning of immunity particularly in association with the delta variant. This
is another bit of data to argue for the booster program that we will soon roll out during the week
of September the 20th.
Had a very heated and intense Zoom discussion this evening with the medical team as well
as people from CDC, FDA, and HHS - Key players among many were: Peter Marks, Janet
Woodcock, Rochelle Walensky, Amanda Fine (CDC), Stephen Cha, David Kessler, Vivek
Murthy, Leslie Dach, et al. The subject matter of the intense discussion was trying to align the
FDA with the CDC in the interpretation of data from Israel regarding the safety and efficacy of a
third shot booster dose. It is clear from the Israel data that there is waning immunity across all of
the age groups not only for infection protection but also for protection against severe disease.
The sticking point is that if the FDA pushes for approval of the third booster shot for all ages
there is the question of a lack of a lot of data for safety among young individuals particularly in
the context of myocarditis. The CDC , particularly in the person of Amanda Fine, was very
concerned that the ACIP would balk at recommending for younger individuals the third dose
because there was not enough safety data. As we all know Jeff is very much intense on getting
this approval through. I would imagine that he would be OK with the approval now of doses
down to around 30 or 40 years old with the stipulation that as soon as safety data comes in for
younger people, we could approve that for all ages. We will continue the discussions over the
next 24 to 36 hours. What was supposed to be 1/2 an hour meeting tonight turned out to be a 2
1/2 hour meeting. This subject is being intensely discussed throughout the community and into
the media. The people who were involved in the Lancet article discussed above we're actually
shooting from the hip without knowing anything about the Israeli data. It will become clear that
they were completely off base as soon as the Israeli data becomes known to everyone. After the
phone call I spoke to Jeff and explain what happened at the meeting. He seemed OK so long as
we don't stall on the approval.
PRESS: MSNBC – “Morning Joe”; ABC GMA Instagram with Tony Morrison; CNN “The
Lead” with Jake Tapper; MSNBC – “All In” with Chris Hayes
Sept. 15, 2021 – Global – 225,700,000/4,600,000; USA – 41,400,000/662,600
Confusion and controversy continues. There is a lot of discussion in the media about whether
or not there's enough data to make a determination about giving boosters and at what age level to
give them. The medical team feels pretty much in agreement that the FDA should approve
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
boosters down to about 30 to 40 year olds and go the rest of the way down to 18 years old after
we get more safety data regarding myocarditis in the younger group. The media are having a ball
in talking about imagined conflicts and disagreements between the FDA and the CDC. I keep
insisting that I feel that a third shot boost should be part of the standard vaccine regimen and that
a boost is not just the luxury but an integral part of the regiment. That is why I reject the concept
that if protection against hospitalizations remains stable but infection rate is not protected by the
vaccine that everything is OK. I believe that infection with mild to moderate disease is
something that we should do whatever we can to prevent not only because it disrupts individuals
and society but because of the problem of long COVID. The talking head docs on the outside all
have their own opinion, many of whom have not seen the data that we have seen. The FDA’s
VRPAC will meet on Friday Sept. 17 and then all will be settled
PRESS: Radio One Atlanta 107.9 FM – Beyonce Alowishus; Univision Radio “Santo
Remedio” – Monse Medina; El Show de Erazno y Chokolata
Sept. 16, 2021 –
Today – 155,000 cases
Had my every couple of weeks Zoom call with Chris Whitty (UK). Oatrick Vallance is
usually on the calls, but was not on today. We discussed a number of items including the
tension around booster shots that I have described above. The UK has decided that they will give
boosters to everyone 50 years of age and older as well as to their health care providers and
immunocompromised. They are going to wait and observe before they go any younger than 50
years of age also they will very unlikely be vaccinating children younger than 12 years old. This
is in contrast to our plans to complete the clinical trials and vaccinate two as young as six months
old . It is likely that we will have enough data to vaccinate children from 11 years old to five
years old by the middle to end of October into early November.
PRESS: Daily Telegraph – Nick Allen -print; Instagram with Jessica Waller; YouTube with
Roland Martin “Unfiltered”; WTOP Radio with Mike Murillo
KLN (Kaiser Health News):
How Fauci and the NIH Got Ahead of the FDA
and CDC in Backing Boosters
By Sarah Jane Tribble and Arthur Allen September 16, 2021
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, and Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky are sworn in before testifying at a House Select
Subcommittee hearing on April 15. (Susan Walsh-Pool / Getty Images)
In January — long before the first jabs of covid-19 vaccine were even available to most Americans —
scientists working under Dr. Anthony Fauci at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
were already thinking about potential booster shots.
This story also ran on Los Angeles Times.
A month later, they organized an international group of epidemiologists, virologists and biostatisticians
to track and sequence covid variants. They called the elite group SAVE, or SARS-Cov-2 Variant Testing
Pipeline. And by the end of March, the scientists at NIAID were experimenting with monkeys and
reviewing early data from humans showing that booster shots provided a rapid increase in protective
antibodies — even against dangerous variants.
Sept. 17, 2021
Very important decisions made today at VRPAC meeting. They voted unanimously to
approve booster shots for people 65 years of age and older as well as those with underlying
medical conditions that put them at risk for severe disease as well as those with occupations that
put them at risk for infection. This is going to be a very difficult communications challenge. We
just got off a phone call with the medical team following the announcement of this decision by
VRPAC. And it is clear that if you keep all these people in the loop even though it looks like it's
very restrictive you're gonna have about 80% of the population that are eligible to be vaccinated
will be getting that third boost. More later.
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
PRESS: Univision TV “Despierta America”; MSNBC with Craig Melvin; White House
Press conference;
Sept. 19, 2021
Was on three Sunday shows today talking about the FDA decision (see below). As expected
all of the questions related to what was perceived as confusion between what the Medical Group
and the president said versus what the actual outcome of the meeting of the VRPAC was. I
explained in all of the shows that we had always said that what we were talking about and what
the president was talking about was a plan to be able to roll out boosters starting the week of
September the 20th. We would be prepared to do it for everyone who is eligible. The fact that the
recommendation from VRPAC only included people over 65 years old and those from 18 to 64
who either had an underlying condition that would give them a higher likelihood of severe
outcome or individuals who because of their institutional or occupational status puts them at an
increased risk of infection . As mentioned above this constitutes about 80% of the population . I
emphasized in my interviews that this was not the end of the story and that over the next several
weeks two months we might see an expansion of the recommendation. Jake Tapper did ask me
weather I had received a booster always planning to receive a booster. Since I did not want to
give away my medical history I was very vague in my answer saying only that I definitely will
receive a booster but he equivocated about whether or not I had received a booster.
Although I was discreet and politic in the interviews, I still believe that the VRPAC got it wrong
since they do not understand that the end game is not just to prevent hospitalizations. However, I
will not push this , but I will let it play out.
Israel data keep coming in:
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
PRESS: NBC “Meet the Press” with Chuck Todd; ABC “This Week” with Martha
Raddatz; CNN “SOTU” with Jake Tapper.
Sept. 20, 2021 –
Over 2000 COVID deaths in USA yesterday
I have to mention I had an extremely enjoyable interview with Bryant Gumbel (see below).
I had not previously met him and I did not realize what an incredibly nice person he is. Just
saying.
Important day in the relaxation of prohibition on traveling to the United State. It was just
announced that travelers from any foreign country can come to the United states provided they
show proof of vaccination and are tested within 3 days before getting on the plane coming to the
United states and submit themselves to contact tracing if necessary. This news was widely
welcomed by countries such as the UK and others in the European Union.
Had another important and somewhat contentious meeting with the medical team tonight.
We were discussing the importance of having the ACIP be aligned with what the decision of the
FDA was from last week. Rochelle indicated that she believed that the ACIP would be aligned
with the FDA. However , in a friendly but firm manner, I challenged her and asked her what she
herself would want to do and not to rely on being driven by the acip. The discussion went on
until 10:45 PM. Jeff was again frustrated by the fact that he wanted Rochelle to lead the acip and
not to be blindly led by the acip. He felt this way because he wanted to have an organized non
confusing response to all of this. We all felt that we were in line until the meeting was over and
Leslie Dach sent an email to Vivek and David indicating that Peter Marks from FDA just heard
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
that the CDC and acip we're not going to accept the recommendation of FDA about providing
boosters for those who's occupational or institutional status put them at an increased risk of
infection. Peter got so frustrated that he said he will pull back that recommendation so that we
don't get into a fight with the CDC. e-mails below:
From: Fauci, Anthony (NIH/NIAID) [E] <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, September 20, 2021 10:40 PM
To: Murthy, Vivek (HHS/OASH) <[email protected] >; Kessler, David (HHS/IOS)
<[email protected] >
Subject: RE: READ THIS
Definitely! This was exactly the point that I was worried about when I started off the
conversation tonight saying that I was disappointed with what VRPAC arrived at and that I
would be even more disappointed if the ACIP restricted that even more. My fears are realized.
It looks like Peter is pulling back on the occupational and institutional exposure part in order to
not be in conflict with what he projects the ACIP will do. We should definitely discuss this.
From: Murthy, Vivek (HHS/OASH) < [email protected] >
Sent: Monday, September 20, 2021 10:20 PM
To: Fauci, Anthony (NIH/NIAID) [E] <[email protected]>; Kessler, David (HHS/IOS)
<[email protected] >
Subject: Fwd: READ THIS
We should discuss
Sent from my iPhone
Begin forwarded message:
From: "Dach, Leslie (HHS/IOS)" <[email protected]>
Date: September 20, 2021 at 10:13:20 PM EDT
To: "Zients, Jeffrey D. EOP/WHO" <[email protected]>, "Murthy, Vivek (HHS/OASH)"
<[email protected] >
Subject: READ THIS
Get Outlook for iOS
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
From: Marks, Peter <[email protected] >
Sent: Monday, September 20, 2021 10:10:30 PM
To: Cohn, Amanda (CDC/DDNID/NCBDDD/DBDID) <[email protected] >; Berger, Sherri (CDC/OCOO/OD)
<[email protected]>; Walensky, Rochelle (CDC/OD) <[email protected]>
Cc: Walinsky, Sarah (FDA/CBER) <[email protected] >; Dach, Leslie (HHS/IOS)
<[email protected]>; Tierney, Julia (FDA/OC) <[email protected] >
Subject: Follow up
Dear Rochelle, Amanda, and Sherry,
By report, it would appear that ACIP WG and others at FDA and CDC are not happy with giving boosters
to healthcare workers and others less than age 65 at risk of occupational or institutional exposure. I am
not going to fight over this, because I know that within two months they will be proven absolutely
wrong.
Though we have not yet finalized the language, here is where we are heading at the moment:
A Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine booster dose administered at least 6 months after completion of
the primary series is authorized for use in:
•individuals 65 years of age and older, and
•individuals 18 through 64 years of age at high risk of severe COVID-19
Will continue to keep you posted here. Also happy to discuss.
Best Regards,
Peter
See e I believe this is a major mistake. See tomorrow's events below.
PRESS: NPR radio “Morning Edition” with Rachel Martin; BBC World News TV with
Lucy Hockings; HBO with Bryant Gumbel; BBC Radio 4; NBC Universal Online “Top
Story” with Tom Llamas; CNN “The Situation Room” with Wolf Blitzer
Sept. 21, 2021 – Global – 228,800,000/4,700,000; USA – 42,200,000/675,100
Discussions continue to go on trying to align the FDA and CDC. Concern is mostly centered
around the risk of myocarditis in younger individuals . We finally got the FDA agreed to agree
that their recommendation or authorization would be four people greater than 65 and then 18 to
64 for people at risk for severe disease due to underlying conditions and 18 to 64 for people at
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
occupational or institutional risk with the statement that 18 to 30 would be a permissive
recommendation meaning that they should consult their physician. This is something that the
CDC Advisory Board (ACIP) could probably live with . However, we shall see what happens
tomorrow and in subsequent days.
Jeff has been on the phone with me multiple times per day asking me to continue to mentor
Rochelle such that the CDC /ACIP does not veer too far off the FDA recommendations and our
ultimate intent. She is really very good and I love her but she just does not have enough
experience to steer CDC and the direction that we all feel let you go.
I must make a point that over the last few weeks more intensively over the last few days I have
been stressed beyond the limit particularly compounded by the dark web far right maniacs
continuing to attack me in the area of gain of function research, accusations of lying to the
Congress under oath, and a variety of other conspiratorial accusations.
Tonight I went to a reception at the temporary home of the British ambassador to the United
states on 2934 Edgevale terracet, northwest. it was an honor of Prime Minister Boris Johnson of
the UK and foreign minister Elizabeth Truss. It was a great reception and I got the opportunity to
chat with the Prime Minister who clearly knew who I was and was very complimentary to the
way I would have been leading the COVID-19 response effort in the United states we chatted for
a bit and I told him how pleased I was with the relationship that we had developed with his
medical people Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance with whom I have a zoom call about every
two to three weeks.
The next couple of days I'm going to be interesting to see how the situation rolls out with the
booster plan
Sept. 22, 2021
We continue to have 2000 deaths per day !!!
Nice op Ed in the Post today. Written by Jeff and Tony Blinken announcing that the USA will
donate an additional 500 million doses a vaccine (Pfizer) to the developing world superimposed
up on the 160 million those says they have already given 290 countries and the 500 million doses
that they will be distributing. The ultimate total will be about 1.5 billion doses with more to
come.
Wonderful e-mail from King Holmes. See below:
From: King K Holmes <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, September 21, 2021 5:04 PM
To: Fauci, Anthony (NIH/NIAID) [E] <[email protected]>
Cc: Wendy Wertheimer <[email protected]>; Virginia Gonzales <[email protected]>; Folkers, Greg
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
(NIH/NIAID) [E] <[email protected]>; Elisabeth Gunningham <[email protected]>
Subject: Thank you message from King Holmes, for Dr Anthony Fauci
Dear Tony,
Thank you so very much for taking time out of your busy schedule to record and forward that very kind
and complimentary birthday video in time for my September 1st Birthday. I have been one of your many
fans since the earliest days of the AIDS crisis. Your support via the NIH, especially in building our
Department of Global Health, has enabled the University of Washington to have national and
international impact in many ways. It is especially meaningful to have a trusted, respected, and talented
colleague like yourself offer such a wonderful tribute. I certainly return your regard, with much
appreciation!
After we received your video, I was telling my assistant about the days when you were taking on
leadership at NIH, and how you appointed me to chair one of the new committees you formed. What a
fantastic opportunity that was, and how many of my greatest friendships were begun and deepened in
those early days of the NIHAIDS initiatives for research, prevention, and treatment of HIV/AIDS and
HIV/AIDS coinfections. It’s hard to believe that we have come so far in de-stigmatizing STDs and
HIV/AIDS, and have successfully advocated for higher funding priorities at the national and international
levels for all such infectious diseases over the course of our careers.
On that note, I have also been following your work on the current pandemic with much interest and
great respect. Your own career has spanned such a prodigious era of infectious disease research, from
Ebola to the current pandemic, and your reputation as a reliable, straight shooting, “scientist’s scientist”
is fully deserved. You have navigated difficult political waters and public anti-scient biases with aplomb
and at the NIH have kept a steady hand on the tiller as we navigated the most recent rise of an entirely
new pandemic virus, demonstrating principled and fact-based scientific rigor at every stage. Your
example serves to educate everyday citizens to the merits and reasonable expectations of science and
the scientific process, thus becoming an ambassador for science to new generations, as well as to a few
older ones – who seem to have embraced your wisdom with more than the usual enthusiasm Scientists
engender. New fans of yours now “Fauci” (i.e. lose the phone number of) a date who doesn’t wear a
mask or refuses to get vaccinated. Now that is a practical public health trend!
I must admit that I have succumbed to the Fauci fandom that has (justifiably) arisen in your wake. A few
months ago, I was proudly wearing my Fauci socks when my son, King Jr. came over to join me for a walk
– and showed me his own Tony Fauci socks. Clearly, I have taught my kids (and grandkids) well.
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
In closing, I know that you have multiple demands on your time and attention, so I am exponentially
gratified by the time you took to make my birthday greeting so memorable. You are a truly great human
being, in addition to being a world-class scientist and public health leader.
Warm regards,
King
KING K HOLMES, MD, PHD
Distinguished Professor Emeritus / Department of Global Health
Professor Emeritus / School of Public Health
Professor Emeritus / School of Medicine
Director Emeritus / UW/Fred Hutch Center for AIDS Research (CFAR)
Co-Director Emeritus / UW Center for AIDS and STD
University of Washington
office: 908 Jefferson Street / 13th Floor, Room 1311
mail: HMC # 359931 / 325 Ninth Ave / Seattle, WA 98104
phone 206.744.3620 / fax 206.744-3694
exec assistant: Elisabeth Gunningham / [email protected]
[email protected] / globalhealth.washington.edu
Everyone is tense about how things are going to turn out between the FDA authorization
and the CDC recommendation. Jeff is very concerned and wants me to keep “mentoring
Rochelle about the fact that she needs to show leadership and letting the ACIP know how
she feels about what the recommendation should be. She seems reluctant to give any
indication to them what you think should be done , thus leaving it totally up to them, where
by she blindly follows their recommendation . This is driving Jeff, Larry Horowitz, and
Leslie Dach completely crazy with frustration. They feel that she is showing no leadership
qualities at all. I feel for her because I think she wants to do the right thing but he's very
inexperienced in this role.
The FDA came out with a decision that is inexplicable. Checkout 3rd bullet that is no
different from the 2nd bullet:
•individuals 65 years of age and older;
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
•individuals 18 through 64 years of age at high risk of severe COVID-19; and
•individuals 18 through 64 years of age whose frequent institutional or occupational
exposure to SARS-CoV-2 puts them at high risk of serious complications of COVID-19
including severe COVID-19.
Now we have a serious problem of how the CDC is going to interpret this regulatory approval .
Clearly there is strife within the FDA which lead to this completely confusing authorization.
Rochelle has her own problems with the acip who are not going to want to recommend anything
for people less than 30 or 40 years old. What a mess. Let us see if in the long run we can make
some lemonade out of these lemons.
PRESS: CBS Major Garrett “The Takeout”; Washington Post 202 Blog with Jackie
Alemay
September 23, 2021
Highly eventful day!!! Today was the day that the acip would make their recommendation to
the CDC regarding the use of boosters. Inexplicably, they voted to allow boosters for people 65
years of age or older, which is fine, as well as those from 18 to 64 with underlying conditions
leading to severe disease, which is fine . However, they rejected the proposal to give boosters to
people who by occupational or institutional exposure would find themselves at high risk for
infection. There was absolutely no reason at all to do this since that would mean that a 25 year
old person who was obese would get a booster, but a 55 year old school teacher or a 55 year old
intensive care nurse could not get a boost. The rationale for the acip was completely
discombobulated. It had nothing to do with safety since they were talking about policy that was
unrelated to the scientific issues at hand . They got distracted and began talking about what they
were going to do with people who had Moderna as their primary regimen or J&J as their primary
regimen, avoiding the fundamental scientific and public health question at hand. When I heard
this we began a series of phone calls, multiple phone calls, among me, Leslie Dach, Jeff, and
Vivek – all outrages by the recommendation. I texted Rochelle and I begged her to call me in
order that I could explain to her how this would be a fatal mistake if she took the
recommendation of the acip since none of us would be able to defend this. It was a very dramatic
situation where she was in with the secretary and I was texting her late in the evening to please
call me so that I can tell her what I feel she must do. Jeff and Courtney Rowe and Ian Sams were
suggesting that I call up the secretary and give him my opinion. Things were getting very dicey
since the hours were going by and no decision was made. I finally got a chance to speak with
Rochelle and literally begged her to override that decision which was only a 9 to 6 decision and
not an overwhelming unanimous recommendation. The tweets that were coming in when they
heard of the recommendation of the acip were absolutely overwhelmingly against that decision.
Yet Rochelle still felt she could not go against her committee. I pleaded with her over the phone
telling her that I would absolutely strongly defend her publicly if she made allowance for
teachers and healthcare workers to get vaccinated even though they were healthy. Again, she
seemed hesitant to overrule them. Jeff called me multiple times asking me to call the secretary
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
myself. I felt that I could not do this since it would be totally destroying Rochelle if I did that. I
explained to Rochelle that if she does not do that she would be forever branded as someone with
no leadership capabilities at all and if she did overrule them she could turn lemons into lemonade
because she could reclaim her role as a leader since her reputation is one of unfortunately being a
very weak leader. I am dictating this at 10:00 PM on September the 23rd and she still has not
made her decision. I told her that I would be available all evening and the rest of the night if she
wanted to talk. The whole team in the department and the White House is counting on my
influence on her to get her to do the right thing here. I cannot understand why she is so reluctant
to go against a 9 to 6 recommendation when the recommendation is so blatantly incorrect.
Good thing happened tonight - I received the 2021 Bill Foege Award for Global health
together with Carlos Del Rio and Kati Kariko. This was followed by a very enjoyable fireside
chat with Bill. He is one of the true icons in public health and it was an honor to be talking to
him
PRESS: ABC ONLINE Town Hall with Jennifer Ashston; Irish Radio RTE “This Week”;
Sept. 24, 2021
Alas! Rochelle listened to me. She overruled the recommendation of the ACIP. She actually
called me last night at 11:25 PM and then a couple of minutes later to tell me that she had taken
my advice and overruled their rejection of the third bullet. Unfortunately David Awwad had put
a “do not disturb” between 11:00 PM and 5:00 AM on my cell phone and I missed her call. I
then texted her add 5 30 AM telling her that I was sorry that I missed her call. She texted me
right back and we spoke by phone at around 5:40. I congratulated her on what she had done and
told her that she has now shown clear leadership as the director of CDC. Her recommendations
are indicated below “
CDC recommends:
•people 65 years and older and residents in long-term care settings should receive a booster shot
of Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine at least 6 months after their Pfizer-BioNTech primary
series,
•people aged 50–64 years with underlying medical conditions should receive a booster shot of
Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine at least 6 months after their Pfizer-BioNTech primary
series,
•people aged 18–49 years with underlying medical conditions may receive a booster shot of
Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine at least 6 months after their Pfizer-BioNTech primary
series, based on their individual benefits and risks, and
•people aged 18-64 years who are at increased risk for COVID-19 exposure and transmission
because of occupational or institutional setting may receive a booster shot of Pfizer-BioNTech’s
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
COVID-19 vaccine at least 6 months after their Pfizer-BioNTech primary series, based on their
individual benefits and risks.
PRESS: Breitbart: Fauci Defends NIH Funding Wuhan Lab: ‘Only Regret’ Is That It’s
Caused ‘Such a Degree of Distraction’ – This was an interview that I gave to Major Garrett
on his podcast.
Sept. 25, 2021 - Global - USA – 42,800,000/684,900
I had a wonderful evening this evening. Joan Baez and her son Gabe who were supposed to
go to New York City with Gabe's daughter Jasmine who wanted to go to a concert in Queens,
NY. In addition, Joan was supposed to meet with officer Mike Fanone. For some strange reason
officer Fanone just dropped out of sight and did not meet with her. He's the officer who was
brutalized during the attack on the capitol on January the 6th, 2021. Really rather stange. And
so, Joan and Gabe were stuck in Washington and planning to fly back to California tomorrow.
Since they had nothing to do she took a chance and called me up to see if I was free. I was, and
we had Joan and Gabe over the house for a pasta dinner. Gabe was constantly on the phone with
his daughter in Queens who was totally excited at the concert and kept calling him. It was totally
delightful as Joan is such an extraordinary person. We had a wonderful time.
Sept. 27, 2021 – Global USA
Things turning around with all parameters starting to come down even though things are
still bad:
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
There is now considerable confusion about exactly who should get the boost. We know what
the general categories are; however, when people ask exactly who within these categories should
get vaccinated there is lack of clarity. For example, when you say people with underlying
conditions, exactly what are those underlying conditions. It is found somewhere on the CDC
website, but it is very difficult to find and it does not very succinctly tell you what these
conditions are. For example, of the underlying conditions we always talk about the fact that
obesity is very importan in that regard . Yet, when you search for it, obesity is not in those areas
that are easily accessible.
PRESS: CNN “The Situation Room” with Wolf Blitzer
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
Sept. 28, 2021
Yesterday was an important day during one of the zoom calls with the “TV doctors “, i.e.
people who are practicing physicians and public health people who regularly appear on TV
shows. I made it very clear that I was very much in favor of providing booster shots for virtually
everyone who is eligible for a vaccination. I said to the group of perhaps 50 people , mostly
doctors, that the idea that only thing that you have to worry about with vaccines is keeping
people out of the hospital is a false narrative since there are many people who do not require
hospitalization who suffer greatly from getting infected with the virus. I know that this is
contrary to the current recommendations of the CDC and the current authorization by the FDA .
However, I believe that the judgment of who should get it was overly determined by an
understandable consideration of the lack of doses for people in the developing world. In addition,
there is a concern about safety regarding myocarditis for younger people, mostly men; however,
once this is taken care of in my mind there is no reason not to vaccinate essentially everyone.
This becomes even more important since there is great confusion right now with the so called
gradation and prioritization of who should get vaccinated regarding when and how. We are
getting a lot of blowback about this confusion which I totally predicted when I said we should
make things very simple. Anyway, I made my thoughts very clear to the group on this call.
Another important thing that is rolling out is that Rochelle is getting a lot of widespread
credit , which she deserves, about making a broader recommendation than the ACIP indicated.
As indicated above , she made this decision based on very intensive persuasion that I made to her
late at night before she actually made the announcement.
Just a statement about things that have been evolving overtime. There is a lot of discussion
right now and scrambling about getting doses of monoclonal antibodies for people who get
infected. This is a major change from previously when monoclonal antibodies were underused.
In addition, I have not mentioned it but on a very regular basis, literally weekly, we brief the
governors is on a governors's call; we brief the principles (cabinet members and others); we have
a zoom call with the physicians and public health people who are out there on the TV circuit (see
above) in order to keep them up-to-date as to what we are thinking ; and we briefed the President
himself. I do not take notes after each of these ; however it is important to mention that they
occur on a very regular basis.
Noteworthy is the fact that I had an extraordinary podcast interview for one hour with famous
actor Alec Baldwin. He is an amazingly intelligent , funny, an extremely likable person who was
very much in tune with my history and my life and asked very penetrating and important
questions. Without a doubt, from a intellectual and substantive standpoint it was one of the best
if not the best interview that I have ever given.
It was a good day for interviews in that my interview with Ed Yong for the Atlantic festival was
also extremely good. This is not surprising as Ed is one of the most impressive writers and
interviewers that I have ever met
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
PRESS: MSNBC “Morning Joe” with Joe, Meka and Willie; NBC Nightly News with
Lester Holt; NBC with Lester Holt for “kids”; Interview with Ed Young as part of “The
Atlantic Festival”; Podcast with Alec Baldwin.
Sept. 29, 2021 – Global – 232,600,000/4,800,000; USA - 43,200,000/691,500
Had a very tough and ridiculous interview with Hugh Hewitt. Hugh, who usually is a
reasonable, albeit very conservative person, was extremely aggressive with me in an interview in
which he kept insisting that people are not getting vaccinated because I am telling them to get
vaccinated and strongly suggested that I step down and retire since I am the obstacle to people
getting vaccinated. He quoted a survey saying that middle to right people want me to retire and
are not getting vaccinated because I'm the messenger telling them to get vaccinated. Truly an
incredible train of thought on his part. He said we need fresh faces telling people to get
vaccinated and if we had fresh faces then people would get vaccinated. I countered by saying we
do have fresh faces in the form of Rochelle Walensky and Vivek Murthy. And so does he
consider that although all three of us are saying to get vaccinated including two new fresh faces
that people are not getting vaccinated merely because I'm one of the three people telling them to
get vaccinated?? I have never heard of a more distorted train of thought.
This conversation triggered in me some serious thinking about several things including when I
actually would want to retire from the untenable situation that I am in of having 10s of millions
of people hate me because I stand for the truth. Also, this nonsense about conflating the
discussion about gain of function with the lab lead theory is preposterous and totally distracting
and draining of everyone’s energy. Richard Ebright with his gain of function obsession is a total
asshole who is pushing this theory because he “wants to be somebody”. I am terribly
disappointed with Jesse Bloom and David Relman for doing somewhat of the same thing. they
have been pushing to stop any gain of function research for a long time and I believe that in
some respects they are pushing for an even hoping that this was a lab leak , which the molecular
analysis of the viruses that we used in the lab compared to the virus SARS-CoV-2 clearly
indicate that it is molecularly impossible for the viruses under the auspices of the NIH grant to
have been manipulated into or evolved into SARS-Cov-2. The opposition to me is part of the
“big lie” – “Lock her up”; Trump won the election; January 6th was really a friendly visit to the
Capitol; “the China virus” and Trump was correct, “Fire Fauci” since he was wrong all along and
so let's discredit him, and so on. Quite frankly , I am finally coming to the realization that our
democracy is truly threatened and that it is possible, even likely, that our democracy will
crumble with the 2024 election. If trump wins , we are finished . If trump loses, his far right
lunatics will likely try again to overthrow the election. And with the attempts to have state
legislators (Republican) validate the electoral votes, I am really afraid that they might be
successful. Having said all of this, there is no way that I am going to retire before this
outbreak is under control.
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
I continue to give regular interviews about every couple of months with Sheri Fink who is
doing a book on COVID-19. I am trying to stay out of any Trump versus Fauci discussion and
focus more on the evolution of the outbreak.
Matthew Memoli is turning into a real problem. He has written an email dated July 30th to
me to Hugh Auchincloss and to Cliff Lane. The long and short of it is that he feels that
vaccinating people is a bad idea even though he is the major proponent of challenge studies for
vaccines. He believes that by vaccinating people we will be selecting for variants which in the
long run will be detrimental to the population. This is a little bit more sophisticated effort than
that of Scott Atlas. He has gone further than that, however. He has released the email to
congressional committees and to the press and now without a doubt he is going to be talking
about the fact that even though he is a clinical center employee he will refuse to follow the
vaccine mandate that soon will be implemented at the NIH. In addition, he likely will go on the
media spouting this extraordinary philosophy of his. I have made it clear to everyone that we
should not interfere in any way with what he is doing because without a doubt he will say that
we are trying to muzzle him and that will create more of a problem than the incredible nonsense
that he is spewing. It looks like we will just have to buckle down and let him proceed with his
craziness and hopefully he will not do a lot of damage to our attempts to get people vaccinated. It
is inconceivable to me that he actually feels that it is OK to let everybody get infected just so that
we can get immunity where the virus is not selected for by vaccine induced immunity. Letting
people get infected has led to 680,000 deaths in the USA thus far. How can he miss the fact that
the virus circulating within people who don't get an adequate immune response will lead to
variants just as easily as vaccine immunity-induced mutations. He just makes no sense at all.
Matt Memoli has now gone completely rogue. He is turning into a complete Scott Atlas (see
above). Not only does he think that we should not be vaccinating people, he believes that
mandating is unethical because it's going to make matters worse vis-à-vis the immune response. I
thought nothing could be worse than that, but now he's done something unbelievable. He has
taken a speech or an interview that I gave saying that although children statistically do much,
much better than adults which regard to developing severe disease there are still (given the delta
variant) a significant number of children who get sick and hospitalized and in fact there are more
deaths among children from COVID-19 and there are after flu. He comes out now with an email
to me saying that this is untrue and that there are more deaths by far with flu rather than COVID-
19. In fact, he wants me to publicly retract my statement!!!! However, what he is doing is that
he is looking at “estimated burden of flu” which is calculated with a model at the end of the year
which is usually three times the amount of the “reported cases”. I was referring to the reported
cases which are much less. And so, he seems to be out to make me look bad for reasons that I
don't understand except that he is a complete contrarian. He's an infectious disease person who
doesn't want to vaccinate people, who thinks mandates are unethical, and who is now telling me
that I need to retract statements that I've made. He's a junior member of the institute and he is
telling the institute director that I need to retract the statement based on information that he
thinks is incorrect, but is correct. Unbelievable what I have to deal with! We have decided that
we are not going to do anything with him; w are not going to approach him; we are not going to
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
even talk to him about this since I know from my experience that if we do anything, he will say
that we were trying to muzzle him. As far as I am concerned he could say whatever he wants to
say, as crazy as it is, whatever he wants to say. Also he said that he is refusing to get vaccinated
The problem with this is that the new rule from the federal government is that if he does not get
vaccinated he is going to get fired unless he has a religious exemption. If it turns out that he
winds up getting fired, he will almost certainly say that it is retaliation.
PRESS: Hugh Hewitt radio interview; NPR Radio “Here and Now” with Tonya Mosley;
MSNBC – “Reports” with Andrea Mitchell; KLZ Israeli Radio;
Sept. 30, 2021 – Global - 233,100,000/4,800,000; USA - 43,300,000/694,700
Cases continue to gradually come down as do hospitalizations. Deaths, however, are still
increasing as a late indicator and lagging.
Just had a great conversation with Shane Crotty of the La Jolla Institute of Immunology. I
spoke to Shane because I wanted to find out his perspective on the immunological justification
for booster shots to the mRNA vaccines. Shane is a brilliant immunologist and gave me some
terrific insights. He feels , similar to Bob Seder, that the antibody levels are very important in
preventing initial entry of the virus and seeding of the virus in the upper respiratory tract. The
higher levels of antibody the more protection you have. They also taper off reasonably quickly
leading to rather quick (months) waning of immunity to infection. However, he points out that B
cell memory and particularly CD8 and CD4 positive T cells are absolutely critical in preventing
significant disease in the lungs. These are longer duration than serum antibody. This explains
why protection against severe disease (lung involvement) seems to last long and wane less than
protection against infection (antibody that wanes quickly). The thing he pointed out that is
interesting and important is that there is a reasonably longer period of time for people to develop
pulmonary involvement and severe disease since the T cells have enough time to protect the
lung. When they fail then you get lung involvement and this usually takes some time which
explains the unusual finding of why it takes so long from the time a person gets infected to the
time they actually wind up in the hospital on a ventilator which is usually about 21 days. This is
quite different from other acute viral infections in which the lung is quickly attacked and people
wind up in the hospital within a couple of days. In addition, he spoke of the long durability of the
T cell memory and B cell memory response indicating that protection against severe disease will
actually last for a longer period of time whereas protection against infection tends to veer off
pretty quickly. It is right in line with what his pathogenic explanation is as described above. He
does feel that giving a third shot boost is a good idea and that it likely will give a much longer
protection against both infection and likely would enhance the durability of the protection
against severe disease in the lungs. We also discussed the situation of why in late disease you
have an aberrant inflammatory and immunological response. He believes it's a combination of
innate immunity mediated predominantly by monocytes and polys together with robust T cell
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
activity attempting to control virus which has made its way from the upper airway to the lung.
Sometimes this attempt to control the virus leads to so many inflammatory mediators combining
innate with adaptive immune responses that the effects is a profound pathogenic response that
may or may not be suppressed by anti-inflammatories and immune suppressors.
A group of non USA scientists and others Whom I have never heard of Are trying to get rid
of Peter Daszak at ecohealth . See PDF of letter immediately below :
Letter to Nancye
Green.pdf
I do not know who these people are but something strange is going on here.
I met with Leslie Dach at my home this evening to discuss the situation of attacks upon me by
far-right elements. I gave to Leslie some reprints of papers that strongly favor the natural origin
of COVID. We discussed strategies of how to stay ahead of this insidious campaign to discredit
me. We feel that the best approach would be to lay low and not give it any more legs than it has.
In addition, Leslie spoke to me about how pleased he was about how I have mentored Rochelle
Walensky. He also expressed concern about her lack of leadership capabilities and her total
dependence upon professionals at CDC who Leslie feels are antiquated in their thinking and in
many respects are often incorrect. He referred to the experience he had with them when he was
special advisor to Sylvia Burwell when Sylvia was Secretary of HHS. Leslie understandably has
very little respect for the CDC and in fact wants me to help to get Rochelle to start thinking for
herself instead of depending so heavily upon her CDC team. Leslie also expressed some concern
about the lack of involvement of Secretary Becerra in the entire COVID effort.
PRESS: Interview with Fast Company magazine
Oct. 1, 2021 – GLOBAL USA
We have reached 700,000 deaths in the USA!!
Big anti-viral drug advance. Merck (Ridgeback) drug – Molnuvirapir (an RNA-dependent
RNA polymerase inhibitor by inducing mistakes in the virus replication. The CEO of Merck
Ron Davis briefed us last about the results. They were striking. In a study looking at people with
documented mild to moderate infection not requiring hospitalization at the time within five days
of diagnosis were given either placebo or drug. In the placebo group there were 53
hospitalizations in the drug group there were 28 hospitalizations with a 7.3% hospitalization in
the drug group and 14.1% hospitalization in the placebo group. This led to a 50% efficacy with a
P value of 0.001. There were eight deaths in the placebo group and zero deaths in the treatment
group. This is really a major breakthrough in that it is another antiviral drug together with
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
remdesivir that is keeping people out of the hospital. I am sure there will be more on this later.
The United states has already committed to buy 1.7 million doses for a price of $700 per dose
Gave the 2021 Beatty Lecture of McGill University, “COVID-19: Lessons Leaned and
Remaining Challenges”, October 1, 2021, Montreal, Quebec, Canada (Virtual). It was widely
viewed throughout Canada and according to the organizers throughout the rest of the world. This
was followed by a Q&A which was very stimulating and a fireside chat with some of the
students at McGill. A thoroughly enjoyable experience. It was associated with my receiving an
honorary doctorate from McGill
Win over Jeff Zients's house last night with his White House team for a pizza and beer party . I
could only stay there for about 1/2 an hour because I had to leave for another dinner over the
home of Jeffrey Blount and Jeanne Meserve. I was impressed by the camaraderie among jeff's
team many people of whom I had never met since I only meet daily by zoom with the core
Medical Group. Jeff was extremely kind in calling attention to my presence at the reception since
I had to leave after 30 minutes. Eceryone gave me a round of applause. Chris was with me and I
introduced her to all the people that I deal with among that larger group. After the reception,
Andre our security person for the evening drove us the block and a half to Jeffrey and Jeanne’s
home where we had an interesting dinner and a conversation about race in America. Jeffrey is an
African American man and Jeanne is white
PRESS: Usual WH press briefing; CNBC “Closing Bell”
Oct. 2, 2021 –
I had written an email to Robert Davis the CEO of Merck indicating to him that I was
concerned that in the press release for their drug Molnupiravir they did not mention that the
original basic research was funded by NIH at Emory. Rob called me today (Saturday) and
apologized for that slight and promised that in future press releases they would include the
collaboration and contribution of NIAID /NIH.
October 3, 2021 –
Got a really nice note (see below) yesterday from Barney Graham thanking him for my support
of him over the 21 years that he has been at the NIAID vaccine Research Center. of note he has
won a number of prizes already for his work on developing the optimum immunogen for the
COVID-19 vaccine . He has one the Albany prize as well as a number of other prizes. In addition
, drew Weissman , my former fellow, has already won a number of prizes including the Lasker
award. It will be interesting to see who wins the Nobel Prize this coming Monday.
Thank you
note_Fauci .pdf
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
While all of this is happening , I must comment that the country is headed to or might already be
in a constitutional crisis with the far right clearly indicating that they're going to try and disrupt
elections and essentially destroy the democracy. The attacks on me I believe are all a tangential
part of that process . I speak of the big lie of which I unfortunately have been drawn into being a
target of the far right because I represent something that is antithetical to them , namely, the
truth. It is stunning how much time is consumed on warding off the egregious lies about the
NIID grant that funded hey small project in the Wuhan institute of virology. They claim that we
created the COVID virus. Among the scientist who fall into this trap are the usual suspects of
Richard Ebright and David Relmann . However , Jesse bloom has really surprised me claiming
that a lab leak is highly probable when there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that a lab leak
has occurred the only issue is that it occurred in a city that happened to have a laboratory that
studies bats. Amazing that he has come to this conclusion.
PRESS: ABC “This Week” with Jonathan Karl; CNN “State of the Union” with Dana
Bash; CBS “Face the Nation” with Margaret Brennan
Oct. 4, 2021
Very interesting link showing the evolution of cases throughout the United states from the
very first months of the pandemic using a heat map approach:
https://bit.ly/3uE40dF
I participated in a zoom Q&A regarding the Columbus Citizens Foundation scholarship
that is given to an Italian-American medical student and that was given in my name as the
Fauci scholarship. The recipient was Danielle Rinaldi who graduated from Boston College and
who just entered the University of Virginia medical school. We had an interview with Danielle
and I wished her luck in her career
E-mail from Chris Whitty (UK) together with attachment bringing up important point about
people in vaccine clinical trials counting as “vaccinated” for “vaccine passport” purposes.
From: Whitty, Chris <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, October 4, 2021 3:59 AM
To: Adomako, Melissa (NIH/NIAID) [E] < [email protected]>
Cc: [email protected]; Collet-Fenson, Luke <[email protected] >
Subject: Participants in vaccine trials and international travel
Dear Melissa
Would this be possible to pass on to Dr. Fauci?
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
Many thanks
Dear Tony
I hope all is good.
We have discussed very considerable concern we have about people who have taken part in properly
regulated vaccine trials then not being able to travel because they are not counted as ‘vaccinated’ for
some countries. This is a major public health own gaol, because it is now proving a substantial
disincentive to people taking part in trials, or to withdrawing from them.
We think this is an easily fixable problem, but getting the international system to fix it is proving slow
and difficult. A group of senior scientific and medical advisers to government in Europe has drafted a
letter on this. I attach it for your interest, and in case you were also interested in being a cosignatory.
Best wishes
Chris
20210929 - DRAFT
open letter on immu
On our usual weekly call with Secretary Becerra, we discussed the issue of getting many
many more testing kits for home testing out into the community. We are talking about hundreds
of millions of tests which the Brits and others are doing to follow people particularly those with
asymptomatic infection who may be spreading infection. This has been a weak point in the US
government approach for some time now. Although Carol Johnson has been the key person for
testing for the US government, it appears now that Tom Ingelsby is going to be playing a major
role. this is also somewhat connected with the fact that the CDC is not really doing a very good
job of screening for asymptomatic breakthrough infections among vaccinated people.
Francis Collins told me a few days ago that he is going to announce his retirement on
October 6th. I was one of the only people he told and we were hoping that it would not leak. He
gave an exclusive interview to the Washington Post to Lenny Bernstein and Carolyn Johnson.
While I was on my walk tonight with Christine I got a call from Erin Banco from The Daily
Beast. Ellen asked me if I knew that Francis was going to announce his retirement. I told her “no
comment”; she asked again and I said “no comment”. I immediately called up Francis and
alerted him that someone had leaked it. He now has to make up his mind whether he's going to
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
abort his plan of announcing it to the IC directors tomorrow and then making the announcement
on Thursday. The best laid plans …….
Interesting situation where Lindsey Graham mentioned to a group of Republicans that they
should get vaccinated and they boot him out of the room. Goes to show you how crazy the world
is gone we have one of the most conservative Republicans gets booed when he tells far right
Republicans to get vaccinated
PRESS: CNN “At This Hour” with Kate Bolduan; Washington Times: Dr. Fauci:
Americans, especially those vaccinated against COVID-19, should enjoy Christmas
Oct. 5, 2021 – Case and hospitalization continue to come down; however less sharply down
than other surges
Hospitalizations and cases continue to come down. Deaths still up somewhat as a lagging
indicator. The big question that is being debated by everyone as we go into the fall is whether or
not we're going to have another surge as we get into the winter . I keep saying that that will
depend on whether or not we get vaccinated a large proportion of the 70 million people who are
unvaccinated who are eligible to be vaccinated.
Francis Collins retirement. Francis and I tried to keep the announcement confidential until the
time when he wanted to announce it which was yesterday . However, as expected in Washington
DC it leaked and all the press were bombarding me and others about comments. Justifiably and
appropriately I gave glowing comments to the press. The leak was probably through
congressional staff after Francis notified the chairs and minority of the various committees.
although I will miss Frances greatly , it is good that he is leaving now while the Senate is under
democratic control and we have a democratic president . Otherwise it could be a disaster is the
Republicans take over the Senate whereby they would unlikely approve a good candidate. In
addition it would really be a disaster if he stepped down on the Republican president particularly
Donald Trump. I recalled in all of the interviews about his retirement that I had pleaded with him
when he was trying to step down during the trump administration. I knew that if he did that
trump would hire an unacceptable person. Francis listened to me and waited until Biden became
President and we had a Democratic Congress.
PRESS: ABC “The Breakdown” ONLINE with Terry Moran and Kyra Phillips; MSNBC
Peacock with Zelinda Maxwell;
Oct. 6, 2021
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
Hugh Hewitt (see below with PRESS) - As a follow up of the interview with me in which
Hugh Hewitt suggested that I stepped down, he has written an op Ed in the Washington Post
saying the same thing. It is extraordinary how he can blame me for everything that has gone
wrong with the CDC the FDA and HHS. It is becoming very clear that this is part of a truly
concerted effort to discredit me.
Call from Barbra Streisand. Barbra Called me on my cell phone today and they asked me
questions about her booster shot she and her husband James Brolin are going on a trip and they
both had two shots of Pfizer and was asking about whether she should get a boost. apparently
their antibody levels are not particularly high and she was concerned about boosting since she
was a little bit confused about it. Since she and James are both older than 65 years old , I
recommended that they both get boosted. We had some fun on the phone joking about our
mutual Brooklyn accents. It is always good to hear from her.
PRESS:Bloomberg TV with David Westin;
Opinion: Is it time for Anthony Fauci to step
aside?
Opinion by Hugh Hewitt
Contributing columnist
Today at 8:00 a.m. EDT
Oct. 7, 2021 – Global – 236,000,000/4,800,000; USA – 43,900,000/707,100
102,000 case today. All parameters continue to come down slowly
Mandates are working – 25% businesses, 40% hospitals and colleges serving 37% of students
are using mandates
The nonsense still goes on regarding EcoHealth Alliance and the Congress probing as to
the gain of function issue. We now find out that Eco Health was late in the submission of a
progress report which showed some increased pathogenicity in a mouse model. There will
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
certainly be a conflation of their administrative failings with the proposal that many of the far
right are pushing that the grant created the virus which as we've said multiple times is
molecularly impossible. However, anything that is even a minor infraction of that grant will be
conflated with the issue of the origin of the virus. In fact, Eco Health should have let the NIH
know that in some of the mouse experiments there was an increase in pathogenicity associated
with the chimeric virus. However what people will not appreciate is that even with that increase
in pathogenicity, the experiment and the result still does not fall under the category that would
trigger P3CO. In other words, According to the operable definition of gain of function of
concern at the time, this was not gained a function of concern. Namely, it was not an experiment
that would increase the transmissibility and pathogenicity a virus that would likely cause
widespread transmission and morbidity/mortality IN HUMANS. Some people may not like that
definition under which we were operating, but that is the definition that was established by
outside groups after a 3 year deliberative process. As I have said in the past if they don't like the
definition then they should change the definition. However, what was done was done according
to the existing definition at the time.
PRESS: Gray Media TV “Full Court Press” with Greta van Sustern;
Oct. 8, 2021 - Global – 236,600,000/4,800,000; USA – 44,100,000/708,800
Hatred on twitter!! I have not been commenting on this in my daily notes . However, the vitriol
and outright hatred towards me by the far right on Twitter is accelerating and is really
extraordinary. Greg Folkers describes it as a cesspool of hate against me. This is amplified by the
Fox News network who uses every opportunity particularly with Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity,
and Laura Ingraham who almost every night say something about me that is a total lie and would
under other circumstances be extremely libelous. This is part of the total movement of the “big
lie”. CNN with Don Lemon last night showed clips of former Vice President Pence, Minority
Leader Kevin McCarthy, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and Lindsey Graham condemning
former president trump for being the instigating force behind the January 6th insurrection and
insisting that he be held responsible for this. Then Don Lemon fast-forwarded to their statements
recently in which they acted like January 6th never occurred. For example, former vice president
Pence said that January 6th was a creation and fabrication of the media . This is astounding that
these lies can be said without blinking an eye. I am concerned in some respects about myself
and my safety even though I have security. However, I am even more concerned about
whether our democracy will survive.
There had been some talk that countries such as the UK, EU, and Israel we're allowing people
who have recovered from COVID infection to be considered as equivalent to being vaccinated
and hence would be allowed to have a “green pass “. As it turns out that certainly is not the case
for the UK (see above – Chris Whitty) and recently Israel has also denied that that is the case for
them. However, post-infection people will need 1 dose of vaccine for a green pass. The new
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
measure will be introduced on the same date that anyone who has not received a booster shot six
months after getting a second vaccine dose will have their Green Pass revoked.
There has been considerable disagreement and discussion about whether the delta variant
is more severe in children compared to other variants . Certain studies showed that delta
variant appears to be more serious in adults compared to other variants; however, there is
disagreement about children. A recent study came out from the UK showing that severity of
illness was similar in children who were infected with the alpha variant compared to the delta
variant . See link below:
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.10.06.21264467v1.full.pdf
As booster discussions and disagreements continue, the Israeli data more and moire show that
my stance on boosters is correct. For example, it is becoming clear that boosters protect against
the waning immunity for infection and severe disease for individuals as young as 40 years old
and not just for individuals who are 65 years of age and older . See recent paper in preprint
server:
Protection Across Age Groups of BNT162b2 Vaccine Booster against Covid-19 Yinon M. Bar-On*, M.Sc.,
Yair Goldberg*, Ph.D., Micha Mandel, Ph.D., Omri Bodenheimer, M.Sc., Laurence Freedman, Ph.D.,
Sharon Alroy-Preis, M.D., Nachman Ash, M.D., Amit Huppert*, Ph.D. and Ron Milo*, Ph.D. *Contributed
equally
Had very successful leadership forum today. Somewhat sentimental since it is Francis Collins’s last
leadership forum
Oct. 10, 2021 – Global USA
Had a rather slow relaxed day (Columbus Day holiday). Also Chris went to New Orleans to help
Megan and Melissa move into their new home. I spend time reading in depth certain articles
including the frightening article in the New York Times by Robert Kagan on the danger to our
democracy. In addition I read a bunch of scientific stuff that felt good since I usually AM 1/2 an
inch deep and five miles wide.
I'm trying to put out of my mind the continual attacks by the far right dark web, Fox News, and
the lying senators and congressmen who keep harping on the gain of function nonsense. I'm
trying hard to not let it distract me, but it clearly is an organized assault on me
PRESS: CNN “State of the Union” with Dana Bash
Oct. 11, 2021
Over the past few months and more intensively over the past several weeks there has been
considerable discussion between Peter Staley, James Krellenstein, and David Barr and Jeff
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
Zients, David Kessler and me concerning the activists’ desire to get the federal government
to pre-emptively increase the capacity of companies, particularly moderna, to make more
vaccines for low and lower middle income countries. the activists want us to invoke the
defense production act (DPA) to force moderna to allow Lonza to increase their capacity for
vaccine production for LMICS. below is just one of a series of emails reflecting the frustration
on the part of Peter and colleagues with our inability to do that right now . What they do not
completely understand is the complexity of the issues involved , although their ultimate goal as is
mine is laudatory namely equity for vaccines for the rest of the world . See below emails :
From: Kessler, David (HHS/IOS) <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, October 11, 2021 1:04 PM
To: Konyndyk, Jeremy (USAID.GOV) <[email protected]>; Fauci, Anthony (NIH/NIAID) [E]
<[email protected]>; natalie.h.quillian (eop.gov) <[email protected]>;
[email protected]
Subject: Fwd: Moderna, Racing for Profits, Keeps Covid Vaccine Out of Reach of Poor
Jeremey
How should I respond to Peter. Seems like the discrepancy between what Covax and the activists are
saying is a key issue.
ThAnks
D
Sent from my iPhone
Begin forwarded message:
From: [email protected]
Date: October 11, 2021 at 12:46:40 PM EDT
To: "Kessler, David (HHS/IOS)" <[email protected] >, "Fauci, Anthony (NIH/NIAID) [E]"
<[email protected]>, James Krellenstein <[email protected]>, [email protected]
Subject: RE: Moderna, Racing for Profits, Keeps Covid Vaccine Out of Reach of Poor
James should know what COVAX is saying. From our view, if you don’t count the badly
underperforming vaccines, then we’ll need about 4 billion doses more than currently promised.
And buying doses still matters, especially since we waited this long to look at manufacturing. I
know you got burned with Emergent, but J&J should be back in the mix at this point.
Cheers,
Peter
Released by Chairman Rand Paul
From: Kessler, David (HHS/IOS) <[email protected] >
Sent: Monday, October 11, 2021 12:33 PM
To: Peter Staley <[email protected]>; Fauci, Anthony (NIH/NIAID) [E] <[email protected]>;
James Krellenstein <[email protected]>; [email protected]
Subject: RE: Moderna, Racing for Profits, Keeps Covid Vaccine Out of Reach of Poor
Peter
How many mrna doses to you want delivered to l/lmic countries by end of 2022 beyond what we and
covax/au have already contracted for? What do you understand Covax to be saying the gap is?
d
From: Peter Staley <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, October 11, 2021 7:55 AM
To: Kessler, David (HHS/IOS) <[email protected] >; Fauci, Anthony (NIH/NIAID) [E]
<[email protected]>; James Krellenstein <[email protected]>; [email protected]
Subject: Re: Moderna, Racing for Profits, Keeps Covid Vaccine Out of Reach of Poor
Adding Jeff. If you all had used the DPA to setup a GoCo factory with Lonza back in February, we’d be
delivering millions of doses of NIAID’s vaccine to low income countries right now.
Instead, you still won’t talk directly to Lonza (even though