Faucis Diary

This is essentially a 3 year diary/media scrapbook covering 2020-2023. Actually since it starts on page 600 something he probably started it at some point before COVID, perhaps as early 2017. Sure would have liked to seen those pages., There is for some reason a big gap in the COVID YEARS, where there are no entries from late November 2021 to May 31,2022 which coincided with the Omicron outbreak and the period of largest numbers of COVID deaths. This was also a period of talk about biolabs in Ukraine

Much like the Epstein Files the Organized Mob try to make much about nothing by taking things out of context or treat it as something new when it’s been known for ages. Whatever sells I guess.

I am somewhat taken aback at how little there is, especially related to the “Science”. Fauci seems more like an administrative and political geek dazzled by his inflated ego and not very bright at that. Of course he was 80 years old so I give him that.

He clearly was not the master mind of anything but surely was part of the Operation COVID conspiracy. Perhaps a useful idiot or scapegoat for the right to disguise the fact that it was Trumps Administration that ran Operation COVID, primarily the NSC which includes a fusion of military, health and intelligence agencies. Only those at the top were privy to the big picture.

Keep in mind that Trumps NSC classified all COVID policy discussions starting in mid-January 2020 before there was a single case in the US. Fauci of course was involved in those policy meetings and as such was likely prohibited from discussing or even writing about certain things in his diary. Indeed the COVID policies Fauci supported including lockdowns came from the NSC (PanCAP adopted for COVID on March 13,2020)

What motivated Fauci to keep a diary beyond serving as an outline for his memoirs I cant say. Perhaps nothing, just for the memoirs he planned to write. Or maybe he thought it would be useful for his defense if he got prosecuted. In any event I found it to be a Limited Hangout and not very enlightening

Before I get to the excerpts a couple of notes on what is missing.

No mention of the CREID Network

Nothing on the DARPA Defuse release on September 2021.

Nothing about DRASTIC

Nothing about Baric except in a NYT excerpt

No mention of his NEJM paper he coauthored with Robert Redfield on March 26,2020 , only 10 days after Trumps NSC locked us down, where they said

If one assumes that the number of asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic cases is several times as high as the number of reported cases, the case fatality rate may be considerably less than 1%. This

suggests that the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to

those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%) or a pandemic influenza (similar to those in 1957

and 1968) rather than a disease similar to SARS or MERS, which have had case fatality rates of 9 to 10% and 36%, respectively.

https://www.paul.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/2026.07.24_Tonys-Diary-Package.pdf

Nothing about Ivermectin. Very little concern about finding treatment for COVID among approved drugs

Little concern about the Vaccines safety, even during the worst surge of the Pandemic as the vaccines were being rolled out. Fauci speculated that perhaps a new variant was responsible but never entertained that the increased cases and deaths could be due to the vaccines. Never mentioned VAERS reports or V-Safe.

After February 2020 Fauci never mentioned what the case fatality rate was, probably because it was confirmed to be low except in the elderly

Seemed oblivious that increased testing in hospitals could be due to increased testing of all patients and drive up hospitalization cases, but Fauci denied this

Never mentioned they needed to adjust Remdesivir trial endpoint to get approved.

The trial protocol originally used a mortality-status endpoint but was amended to use time to recovery before the interim analysis. The reduction in mortality was not statistically significant. Also the placebo was not saline but Sulfobutylether beta-cyclodextrin sodium (SBECD) which is used in Remdesivir and has an effect on the kidney

Didn’t mention the NSC’s PanCAP as adopted for COVID

Didn’t seem rigorously consider the impact of lockdowns, school closures, social isolation, and fear on excess deaths and determine if the costs outweighed the benefits . After all, deaths were mostly in the elderly like with flu. Being an elder myself I recognize we are all going to die anyways, and we are already on the door step. I am convinced many of these deaths were related to the mitigation measures. We can only estimate how many.

The fact so many countries did the same thing is what makes this a Global Conspiracy. Fauci never mentions Taiwan but in Taiwan COVID was not a problem until the Vaccine came out in May 2021. Following the booster it literally exploded in 2022 despite everyone wearing masks and being vaccinated and excess deaths remained high until the 2nd half of 2025.

So lets get to the excerpts of his diary, or not, your choice. This is mostly for my own reference anyways.

Jan. 16, 2020 - The situation in Wuhan, China continues. Now have 2 deaths and 2 cases in Thailand and 1 in Japan. Was in on a PCC meeting via the NIH SCIF with the NSC chaired by Anthony Ruggiero. CDC and DHS have decided to do entry screening at 3 USA airport in people coming directly and indirectly from Wuhan: Kennedy in NYC, LAX, and SFO.

Tomorrow night at 10:00 PM a 747 from Wuhan will arrive at Kennedy and will be the first to get screened.

My Note-Trumps NSC ordered that all COVID Policy discussions he classified and held in a SCIF. Strange

Jan. 26, 2020 - GAME ON!!! Things are changing rapidly. Dr. Ma Xiaowei, the Chinese Minister of Health gave a press statement saying that the incubationperiod of nCoV is 1 to 14 days and that the virus is being transmitted when people are asymptomatic! This has enormous implications for how we handle people from Wuhan (like our diplomats who are now on the way back from WUHAN, having been ordered to evaculate). Should we quarantine them.

I am very skeptical about the Chinese interprepation of their data. I spoke with Mike Ryan (WHO) from Geneva and he and Tedros are going to Wuhan soon. Mike is very skeptical that aymptomatic spread is present or at worst is a major driver of spread. Mike Osterholm also feels this way.

I spoke with Nancy Messonnier and Bob Redfield this AM to coordinate our responses. Bob and I feel (and I told Elizabeth Cohen this) that we should be allowed to send our CDC epidemiologists to China to work with them so that we see the data first hand since we will base important response activities and strategies based on whether this is true. It would require our quarantining for a period of time even asymptomatic people who arrive from Wuhan.

My Note-Trump allowed the last CDC Epidemiologist to be withdrawn from China in July 2019

It now appears using epi data and genomic data that the first infection was in early December and was not connected to the market. The infections spread among people weeks before the Chinese reported that they were dealing with a new infection and that gave the virus time to establish itself in multigenerational (sustained) spread.

Remember, early on the Chinese were saying that there is no human to human transmission and all the original 27 cases were from the market. Now we know the market was not the source, it was the amplifier.

My Note: Some of the Lab Leakers making this sound like Fauci discounted natural origins and animal spill over. This is not the case

Having said that, somewhere the virus jumped from animals to humans.

There is complete chaos in China now with president Xi Jinping declaring an emergency situation. The Chinese are building within days 1000 and 1300 bed hospitals and flying in hundreds of medical personnel from military. They have shut down travel within most of the country and have called off many Lunar New Year events. Schools closed at least until mid-February. Running out of supplies such as PPE.

Had 8:00 PM call with Anthony Ruggiero, Phil Ferro, and Bob Redfield about the evolving situation. The deputions and White House are pushing to close the borders for any traffic from China Bob and I are against that. Anthony said that he heard that I wa in favor of that. Will have 11:00 AM meeting tomorrow from SCIF with Deputy National Security Advisor Matthew Pottinger regarding possibly closing borders from China entry.

Jan. 27, 2020 - Packed day today. Council and multiple important non-corona-virus meetings.

Busy day - two meeting with White House via SCIF. First at 11:00 AM led by Deputy Director NSC Matt Pottinger who still wants to stop all incoming from China. Bob Redfield, Phil Ferro, Mart Cetron, Peter Marks etc.

Second White House meeting via SCIF was on same subject with Mick Mulvaney Chairing and visit to meeting by VP Pence. Still discussing the pros and cons of shutting off China. I tried to squeeze in my opinion, but it was touch since I was remote. briefed Azar beforehand by phone as to the down side (historically) in shutting out a country. Also at the meeting were Joe Grogan, Matt Pottinger, Alex Azar, DHS

Jan. 30, 2020 - The chaos: We had 2 PCCS led by Ruggiero and one Deputies lead by Mick Mulvaney with the usal cast of characters. Case in point. Mart Cetron who was listening in on the WHO call said that the epidemic was accelerating that this is was clear that the incubation period was shorter (2-5 days than was previously felt and that asymptomatic transmission was occurring. Thus, it was agreed to present to the POTUS a revised plan for containment: The 200 people at March Base would be quarantines for 15 days.

Anyone coming in from Wuhan would be quarantined for 15 days.

The number of cases today are: 9480 with 213 deaths. It is increasing by about 25% per day. In 1 month it has surpassed SARS for 1 year (8000).

WHO Declares a PHEIC

The POTUS announced the Coronavirus Task Force today

Jan. 31, 2020 - Another truly amazing day. Sequested in the White House essentially all day working out a proposal to put before the POTUS that would restrict travel from China. The proposal was driven largely by CDC (Marty Cetron) who felt that given the volume of people coning in from China by direct and even more importantly indirect flights it would be logistically impossible to effectively screen people at many, many airports and the diversion of people from their place of origin to selective airports would further complicate things. Also, the cases continue to sharply rise with 12000 cases and 259 deaths.

In addition, the WHO declared a PHEIC yesterday prompting Azar to declare a Public Health Emergency here in the USA. I disagreed with the latter since there were only 7 infections (6 travel) at the time.

Presentation was made to the POTUS by Azar, Bob Redfield and me. Trump as he did a couple of ddays ago posed many questions to me making sure that I thought it was a good idea. I said this was an imperfect process, but the best choice we have right now. He questioned me about what the difference was between this and flu. He somewhat brashly suggested even more stringent restrictions and was dissuaded by Kellyanne.

She clearly has influence over the POTUS.

When I got back to my office, got call from Jeremy Farrar who sounded very concerned and conferenced me in with Kristian Anderson, an evolutionary biologist from Scripps. They had also been talking with Eddie Holmes, another evolutionary biologistfrom Sidney Australia.

There have been conspiracy theories that the virus was given GOF by inserted mutations and deliberately or accidentally released in Wuhan. One theory was written by Indian investigators that HIV sequences were inserted by a Chinese person in Canada and released in Wuhan. Everyone thinks that is crazy, but the Farrar phone call was different. The people on the phone felt that the mutations around the furine cleavage site of the spike protein could not have occurred naturally since it would require an evolutionary “jump that they found nowhere in bat isolates. They bring up the possibility that this could have been deliberately inserted and either accidentally released or deliberately released by a crazy person in the lab, the former being the most likely.

Jeremy was calling me for advice. I suggest that we get a larger group of qualified evolutionary biologists/virologists together under the auspices of a convening body and carefully look at this. We agreed to convene by phone the next day.

We decided to have a 2-pronged approach strongly suggested by Kadlec who felt we had security responsibilities to investigate this ourselves. He would do this through OSTP and NAS. Meanwhile I would pursue a multinational approach with Jeremy. I decided to now bring in Francis.

Feb. 1, 2020 - Conference call at 2:00 PM with Jeremy, Francis and several other scientists gathered by Jeremy (see below).

rticipants in the Feb., 2020 call included:

• Francis Collins, Director of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, U.S.;

• Anthony Fauci, Director of the U.S. Nutional institute titute of Allergy and Infectious

• Jeremy Farrar, Director of the Wellcome Trust;

• Patrick Vallance, U.K. Chief Scientific Adviser and Head of the Government Science and Engineering;

• Kristian Anderson, Director of Infectious Disease Genomics, Scripps Research
  Translational Institute, CA, U.S.;

• Christian Drosten, Director of Human Virology at the German Center for Infection Research at Charité - Universitätsmedizin, Germany;

• Edward Holmes, Professor of Viral Evolution at University of Sydney;

• Andrew Rambaut, Professor of Molecular Evolution, University of Edinburgh’s

• Institute of Evolutionary Biology, U.K.;

• Ron Fouchier, Deputy Head of Department of Viroscience, Erasmus Medical
  Center, NL;

• Robert Garry, Professor of Virology, Tulane University School of Medicine,
  Louisana, U.S.;

• Mike Ferguson, Professor of Life Sciences at University of Dundee, U.K.; and

• M.P.G. Koopmans, Head of Department of ViroScience, Erasmus Medical
  Center, NL.

My Note: Ralph Baric has to be a spook. He said he was on the call but even Fauci did not know.

There was not total agreement about the likelihood of deliberate insertion. Ron Fouchier said he was sure that this could occur naturally and we should not waste our time and divert effort to pursue this. This is expected of him since he was the original GOF person with Yoshi Kawaoka. Also, Christian Drosten was with Ron; the rest felt that deliberate insertion was possible and given the fact that Dr. Zheng-Li Shi at the University of Wuhan has been working for years in GOF in coronaviruses to allow adaptation of the spike protein to bind to the human ACE2 receptor, we could not let this go. We decided to have Jeremy with Francis to contact Tedros with Stewart Simonson’s help (1 arranged this) to see if Tedros would convene experts.

My Note: I find it hard to believe that if Baric was on the phone as he said that he would not have weighed in unless he was just a mole who was listening in to report back to his controller at DoD or Spook HQers. I remember the bastard on TwIV in March during the lockdown joking he had stock pile of toilet paper and was willing to sell at $10 a roll

Also, There are 2 GOF definitions. Banned GOF is that which in increases function of pathogenic human viruses, and GOF which is not banned such as in bat viruses like Sars related coronaviruses. WIV was doing the latter which is not banned

Feb 3, 2020

Spoke with George Gao tonight in China. George is the Director General of the Chinese Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He confirmed that infected people can be asymptomatic and that asymptomatic people can transmit.

Also, George was very sensitive and understandably defensive since he was the one who said early on that there was no human to human transmission and that the original 27 cases in the wet market reported on December 31, 2019 were animal to human when actually human to human transmission was occurring weeks before. The Wuhan health officials did not tell him this and he thus gave out false information. This lapse likely allowed the outbreak to take hold since Wuhan went about their business with 40,000 pot luck festivals without social distancing.

Feb. 6, 2020 - Cases continue to soare with 28,018/563. Another packed day mostly at HHS and White House. Conspiracy theories still abound. The NAS group with OSTP met (see above) and decided that there was no clear evidence of malfeasance, but it should be looked into

Feb. 7, 2020 - 61 infections on Japanese cruise ship.

Feb. 8, 2020 - Infections and quarantine of the Japan ship (61 so far, including some USCits.

Tom Frieden called me this AM and we discussed various aspects of the outbreak. He and I are on the same page in thinking that this is acting like a bad influenza in its transmissibility and that the denominator is much greater than 34,867 (above) making the case fatality rate (CFR) more like 0.2-0.3 % rather than 2.0%.

My Note: Fauci never came back to this again in his diary. Since when do we lockdown for a bad flu

Feb. 11, 2020 - 13th American infected (San Diego). One of the people air-evacuated by State to Miramar from Wuhan. Minimal sxs.

A PCC document that I just read is proposing that even in Phase IV (see below) we should continue INA 212 (f) travel restrictions. I disagree with this since travel restrictions are to delay the entry of disease into your country. Once you have sustained transmission in your country, it is a waste of resources to try to keep out travelers. I cannot be on the PCC call this AM (on a panel at the Aspen Institute in DC) and so I called Bob Redfield and asked him to respresent me and my reservations about this:

My Note: PCC- Policy Coordination Committees within the U.S. National Security Council

Phases of U.S. Government Response to the 2019 Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV)

Phase IV —Mitigation

• Description: Travel restrictions put in place by active INA 212(f) proclamations remain in place. Limit non-essential domestic travel, cancel public gatherings, social distancing, execute private sector and government continuity of operations.

• Triggers: Wide-spread domestic human to human transmission, could be in cities or regional.

• Objectives: (1) Preserve the functioning of critical infrastructure and mitigate impact to the economy and functioning of society, and (2) support community responses to the extent possible to mitigate illness, suffering, and death.

• Messaging: XYZ.

• Specific Department and Agency Activities: XYZ.

My Note: The agenda was finalized with PanCAP adopted for COVID on March 13 by Trumps NSC. PanCAP had most recently been revised in 2018 during Boltons tenure. Bolton curiously left in September 2019 just as COVID was to break out. This would lead to Matt Pottinger becoming Deputy National Security Adviser who would become a proponent of draconian mitigation measures

Finalized March 13,2020 by NSC calling for lockdowns.

Lockdowns announced March 16

FEMA and DHS would later be made lead agencies to implement the NSC COVID Policy.

Fauci clearly supported this but he was not the only driver.

Mar. 13, 2020 - 132,382/4981 USA 1694 Deaths. Primary health care facilities.

Hot areas - WA, CA, MA, NYC

I thought that it would be a quiet day since the TF meeting was called off. However, at 2:00 PM, I was called down to the White House since the POTUS wanted me next to him at the podium of the Rose Garden as he made the announcement of deckaring at “National Emergency” which would give him and the Secretary of HHS the power to remove many constraints in response to a national emergency. Also on the podium were the CEOs of the major private sector companies that would make tests readily available - CVS, Target, Walmart, etc. I was at the posium and answered many questions of the press in the Rose Garden.

I will be on the 5 Sunday Showes 2 days from now (The “Fauci Five”). Prior to that, I was involved in helping to proof the speech he would give. There were some glaring errors in the speech that I corrected. Got to meet Hope Hicks who was very nice. Jared is playing a major role in all of this.

After the presser the White House people showed me a minute by minute graph of the stock markert from the time the POTUS went to the podium and it went down to the 45 minutes of the speech and questions. The DOW went up in 45 minutes 1980 points, which was the greatest single increase in market history

Mar. 16, 2020 - Came out with the guidelines that reflected my pushing for a more aggressive mitigation 15 day strategy → If you are elderly, self-isolate; do not congregate in groups > 10 people; stay away from bars, restaurants, theaters, sporting events; if a community has community spread CLOSE the bars, restaurants and places of congregation; close schools where there is community spread; no visitors to nursing homes; if family member is sick, others in family should take extra percautions; only necessary travel, telework as much as possible.

Press conference after was highly attended. Stock market dropped by 3000 points, the biggest percentage drop in history.

My Note: I wonder how much the insider traders made on this

March 26,2020

Had a very difficult experience today. The POTUs called my cell and screamed at me because I had mentioned to the Press (likely on a Howard Bauchner podcast or a Politico interview that the duration of immunity for common coronaviruses was 6 months to 1 year and that although we do not know the duration of vaccine immunity, it is possible that we may have to use additional boosts. Apparently the press blew this up and said that the vaccine will only protect for a very short time. The POTUS was very angry. He said I cannot keep doing this to him. He said he loves me but the country is in trouble and I am making it worse. He said the stock market only went up 600 points and it should have gone up 1000 points and so I cost the country $1 trillion.

Quite a phone call.

March 27,220

USA now has more cases than any country in the world

To my surprise yesterday, the POTUS sent a letter to Governors outlining a plan to reopen county by county while monitoring the spread of virus in the low risk counties. This was half-baked and never shown to Deb or I before it was sent out.

It was derived by Jared and Kevin Hassett (modeler) and I cannot see how it can be implemented. I am surprised at Jared, who is usually very measured. This is reckless since it would require monitoring with much testing by CDC and they do not even know about it. Poor Bob Redfield is totally out of it.

My Note: Jared Kushner’s role in Operation COVID and Lockdowns should not be understated

IMPORTANT DAY - There has been a disconnect between what we in the TF have been saying about the availability of PPE (particularly masks) and ventilators and whether the people in the trenchs (ICUs) are actually getting them. We keep saying that the equipment is out there and the medical centers just need to get them and the medical centrers are saying that they are trying to get them and either they do not know how or the USG is outbidding them for the equipment.

I got on the phone via Cliff’s treatment guidelines committee that he is organizing and listened to ICU docs from all over the country. The are very fearful of running out of PPEs within days to a weeks. Ventilators are mostly a NYC issue; they may fall behing and still there is this tension of Cuomo asking for 30,000 vents and USG (us) sayng that the vents are in the warehouses; they just need to get them. I promise the group I would try to fix this nonsense.

At the TF meeting, I took over and said we really have to stop this shit and fix this.

We are acting like these people have everything they need and the fact is they do NOT. I was very empnatic and the VP (good for him) listened. We had FEMA (Pete ) and Adm Pete on the screen and the Adm acted like a rigis navy officer saying that they did their job and got the vents and PPEs to the warehouse and now it is up to the locals to get it distributed. I essentially said that this is bullshit and we need to communicate to them how they can actually get the material. I asked is it our job to just check our own boxes or are we trying to actually get the job done in real life. Clearly, Adm Pete is not happy with me, but so what!

Hope Hicks, Kellyanne Conway strongly agree with me as does Marc Short and the VP. The VP order to make this happen. Also, the POTU finally invoked the DA to have GM make ventilators and we are stopping (via me) saying that NYC has enough. Just give them what they ask for and if it is overkill, they they can return them and give to others.

Important discussion with Deb Birx that I have some concern about. She is using a model from Chris Murray to plot out how to delay the POTUS from pulling the plug for at least 2 weeks more. Critical issue that I feel strongly about and discussed with Cliff is that if we are going to lift restraints on certain areas, we must have the capability of flooding the system with people to do identification, isolation (out of the home) and contact tracing. Otherwise, we will precipitate a surge as is NYC, NOLA, and other locales. Big discussion coming over the weekend.

POTUS signed $2.2 Trillion (up to $6.2 trillion) relief package for the economy to give aid to laid off workers and other vulnerables. POTUS signed bill in the OVAL and actually delayed the signing until I wa called from the lower West Wing lobby to be there for the signing. When I entered the OVAL the POTUS said, “Anthony, come here with us. I cannot sign this without you being here”.

The entire crowd in the OVAL including several Senate (McConnell) and House (McCarthy) leaders and Cabinet members present applauded me as I entered

Very embarrassing. I am not comfortable with this attention. After the signinf, the POTUS asked me and others to make comments before the many TV cameras that were let into the OVAL

Very laborious press conference where the POTUS rambled on. He wasted the opportunity to just focus on the relief package and went into his diatribe against previous administrations.

My Note: Government spending trickles up and most of it eventually ends up in billionaires pockets and COVID made a lot of billionaires richer. This is the real Socialism in this country. Not exactly what Marx imagined

March 28,2020

AMAZING interaction with POTUS. Today Trump tweeted that he was considering quarantining the NY tri-state area (NYC, NJ. CN). This triggered a major news buzz. Gov. Cuomo called me; I was in my NIH office getting ready to do the Saturday TF meeting from the NIH SCIF. Cuomo asked me to help dissuade the POTUS since he (Cuomo) would have to forcibly push back on this and would defy National Guard troops sent to enforce the Quarantine.

At the TF meeting we had major discussions lead by VP. I helped convince people that a quarantine was not tenable and that we should recommend to POTUS to do a “strong travel advisory” that the governors would strongly support instead of having the Feds enforce a quarantine.

I thought that I was finished for the night and would go home to an evening off when the

My Note: I don’t expect the Lab Leakers will give Fauci credit for avoiding Federal Quarantine which would make Lockdowns look like easy street.

VP said I should come down to his office and we should, together with Deb, Chad Wolff, Steve Mnuchin, Mark Meadows, Marc Short meet with the POTUS to tell him our recommendation to announce tomorrow.

We met with the POTUS in the living quarters (not the OVAL) for about 1 hour. I led the discussions since the POTUS kept referring to me. It was a disturbingly rambling discussion since he kept talking about TV ratings, and HC, and influenza and virtually everything else as I was trying to keep him on track (with the help of the VP).

Finally, we got him to agree to “travel advisory” and not quarantine. We wanted to announce tomorrow, but he wanted to tweet this tonight. He also said he wanted to get the Governors on board and so he wanted to call Gov Cuomo (NY), Gov Murphy (NJ), Gov. Ned Lamont (CN). And so, we adjourned to the Lincoln Study and finalized the language for the Advisory right at the Lincoln desk where the Emancipation Proclamation was signed.

I kept insisting that they do not slip and let the CDC (from whom the Advisory must come) to use their words of “DO NOT TRAVEL”. Also, I insisted through the rambling and lack of attention span that the POTUS explicitly say that this is NOT a quarantine. Finally, he individually called the 3 Governors starting off by saying “I am here with Tony and a few other people.....” Cuomo was OK but questioned to be explicit as to just what “Advisory” meant. We go it straightened out and before he went to the other Govs, he called up Sean Hannity to schmooze about TV ratings (I am not kidding). Finally, he got to the other Governors and we stopped for the night

Marc Short will work with CDC to get the right language out and the POTUS will tweet this later. I texted Cuomo saying that I had pushed back and we had avoided the quarantine. He responded: “I know that. It wasn’t his conscience. He would have made a terrible mistake for the nation. I would have had to organize the Governors to rebel. Last thing we need. Thank you....on behalf of all of us.”

WHAT A NIGHT!!!

Mar. 29, 2020 (SUNDAY) - Cases continue to soar.

BIG DAY AT WHITE House

Spent several hours with the POTUS.

Deb and I pushed hard to have the POTUS extend the 15 day guidelines for another 30 days to end of April even though Mark Meadows and Kevin Hassett were against this. They wanted to just go to 15 days extra and then re-evaluate. We pushed and said that we would leave to the POTUS.

We met with the POTUS in OVAL and Deb and I presented the case for 30 days.

He accepted that right away (he really trusts me very much). He decided that he did not want to wait three days to Tuesday to announce and so we Chaotically and quickly wrote into his speech the announcement that it would be 30 days. We had a press conference in the Rose Garden (RG) and he called several times of me and Deb to explain the rationale behind the decision. It was another of the painfully rambling press conferences that lasted on a beautiful evening the RG for 2 hours.

POTUS kept on mentioning the potential 1.5 to 2.0 million deaths in the USA due to Coronavirus, which is actually the worst case scenario of a flawed model; however, he felt that if he keeps mentioning that, then the people will take what we are saying seriously. He is incorrigible.

At the end of the day it was a good outcome since we convinced him to go with 30 day instead of ending the mitigation prematurely, which I feel would be a disaster. At the presser, I emphasized that we must pay attention to the cities/states/areas with relatively few cases since they could explode just like NYC and NOLA and other cities.

CRAZY PRESS - the fringe far-right crazies are cooking conspiracy theories that I am a Hilary Clinton mole trying to destroy Trump. See NY Times - Sunday March 29, 2020 “Chief Scientist Draw Venom From the Right” by Davey Alba and Sheera Frankel. Also, article in NY Times on “Testing Blunders....”

April 13, 2020 - Potential big problem (we shall see). NY Times reporting on an answer to a question that I gave on CNN yesterday (see above). Jake Tapper asked me if we had closed down earlier, would that have saved lives. I said it is complicated; he persisted and I said obviously, if you close earlier there would have been lives saved, but the decision was complicated. I could have answered the question better and with more clarity, but the Times is now saying that I was implying that the POTUS was to blame for additional deaths according to me.

My Note: There was not nor is there now any Scientific evidence showing lockdowns saved any lives

The far right is tweeting to fire me. The POTUS even re-tweeted the tweet that said to fire me. We shall see how the day goes.......

I called up Marc Short and explained that I was answering a hypothetical question and I told the truth. Marc was very supportive and said the POTUS was not upset and understood.

I met with VP - he called me to his office 15 minutes befor the TF meeting and we discussed this. He was terrific. I said I was angry at having been put into this position, I am completely apolitical, and I am loyal to the people that I work with. I offered to explain to the press at the daily White House press conference. Right before I walked in, I huddled with the POTUS and told him what I would do. He was very relieved and grateful saying that his right wing base is causing a lot of trouble and he was total OK with me.

I went out and explained that I was being honest in my answer to Jake, but that I was not implying that anyone was responsible for more deaths. I explained that the 2 times I recommended to the POTUS to go to ‘mitigation” (15 day, then 30 day) he took my (and Deb’s) advice and started to mitigation guidelines despite the fact that some people were pushing back (did not mention any names)

Right after that, he went on an anti-media rage showing a filiming recently put together that day by staff showing how he was on top of everything and responded swiftly. Again, repetitive stream of consciousness. I was uncomfortable sitting there.

Phone call with Jake Tapper. Jake wanted to make sure the interview did not cause me any problems.

April 14, 2020 - Press buzz still continues. Feature story in today’s Washington Post: “Despite assurances, debate over Fauci’s fate continues” by Toluse Olorunnipa, Seung Min Kim and Josh Dawsey. Also, Mike Gerson wrote an editorial in the Post attacking Trump for attacking me (re-tweet that energized Trump’s right wing fringe to attack me.

Global - 1,800,000/112,000; USA - 580,000/24,000. Daily cases starting to level off over past couple of days.

Did not do Presser today. Topic was economic. He rambled on in typical manner. He reversed himself from yesterday when he said that he has “absolute power” to tell the Governors what to do in the “re-opening”. He stunned the press with that announcement and people like Caitlin Collins pushed him on saying that since it is not true. He blew it off yesterday. Today he said that he leaves it to the Governors

It is clear after a meeting that I was called to with the VP at 10:30 AM with Deb.

Jared, Brett, and some from Jared’s team that they have salready decidedthat they will “re-open” the country on May 1 no matter what I or Deb say. Deb (as expected) is totally bought in on this. I am quite skeptical that they have a program in place to respond to a rebound. CDC certainly in incapable and Bob even even admits that his team is mor “academically oriented” as opposed to pandemic emergency oriented. Also, testing is still an issue.

April 15, 2020 - Global - 1,900,000/120,000; USA - 603,000/25,000

Print media still pitting everything I say as contradicting POTUS. They are also digging into what I said it February indicting that I said the virus would not be a problem; however, when you read my entire sentence, I said at this time (when there were a couple of cases in the USA) there is not a serious threat, but this could change very rapidly and so we need to be prepared. They leave out the last part of the sentence.

Peter Nicholas of The Atlantic (Peter Nicholas)wrote a piece saying I was humiliated and “shamed” by getting in front of the cameras and backing off the

CNN interview with Tapper. Fuck you, Peter.

Has discussion with Chris this AM (in bed) about my considering resigning from the Task Force. The CDC/FEMA, etc in my mind have no idea what they are doing. There really is no plan. Deb is secretive and worried about her job wanting to please the VP and POTUS and the press briefings are a total Shit Show with POTUS rambling. I am afraid that if I resign it will be a global explosion and might also look to my many admirers like I am deserting the cause, but this is getting very tough.

Deb Birx last night put together the plan to re-open based on a combination of the plans put forth by Tom Frieden, Scott Gottlieb, Zeke Emanuel. I edited it today with her. VP asked me to leave the TF and work with her. I edited what she had already done. It was really a done deal before she showed it to me. I emphasized that what was missing was guidelines about what to do if there is rebound. It was almost as if she had not even thought of that. She said she would do this tonight. This is really seat-of-the-pants stuff with patching together overnight a plan that has enormous implations for the health and safety of the nation. I will hang in there to help as much as I can.

April 16, 2020: Global - 2,000,000/125,000; USA - 640,000/32,000.

Today is day when newe Guidelines for re-opening will be announced.

I was shocked last night when she e-mailed me and said that all my edits had been accepted by the “Comms people”. However, they wanted to take out the part about recommending masks. I wrote back (see bold below):

Okay. Great. If we explicitly say follow CDC guidelines regarding use of masks and use during mass transit, then I cannot see how there can be any objection.

From: Birx, Deborah L. EOP/NSC <Deborah.L.Birx@nsc.eop.gov>

Sent: Wednesday, April 15, 2020 9:52 PM

To: Fauci, Anthony (NIH/NIAID) [E] <afauci@niaid.nih.gov>

Subject: Re: WH Comms kept all of our words

Haven’t done rebound yet. Will do early am. Pushing back on mask saying follow cdc guidance and wear during mass transit.

On Apr 15, 2020, at 9:49 PM, Fauci, Anthony (NIH/NIAID) [E] <afauci@niaid.nih.gov> wrote:

We should push back a bit on the masks. I think that it is important. Since when do comms people dictate public health suggestions? Walk out of the streets and people are wearing them anyway. We should be on board with them. I would be happy to do that tomorrow. We are meeting with the VP tomorrow morning. Can you arrange for you and I to meet with the relevant person so I can give it a pitch? Also, let me see the part that I did not see regarding what one does when rebound of virus occurs in the midst of a diminution of current mitigation.

Thanks, Tony

From: Birx, Deborah L. EOP/NSC <Deborah.L.Birx@nsc.eop.gov>

Sent: Wednesday, April 15, 2020 9:43 PM

To: Fauci, Anthony (NIH/NIAID) [E] <afauci@niaid.nih.gov>

Subject: WH Comms kept all of our words

Except took out the mask in public - kept all the thresholds. What do you think? I am OK if covered in CDC guidelines I guess. Deb

In private conversation with Marc Short, I explained to him my concern about being brought into the writing of the guidelines that they wanted me to endorce, and yet I only saw them for the first time last night. Marc said that Deb told him she had run them by me and Bob Redfield. Bob said that the first time he saw them was last night. I gently confronted Deb with this and she garbled an embarrassed response.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) called my cell concerned about whether his state is ready to re-open.

His consitutuents are frightened about coming out since they realize there is no treatment and they could die from the disease.

Worked on the guidelines a bit and now got them right. POTUS, VP Deb and I presented these at the Presser. Generally well-received, everyone still fixated on the issues with testing

April 22, 2020 - Interesting day - Rick Bright has gone rogue. Due to his poor performance as head of BARDA, Alex (+/-) Kadlec removed him from his post. We (Francis and I) thought that he would stay at BARDA and spend 50% of time at NIH in order to coordinate BARDA with NIH vaccine activities,

We all had always felt that he was making bad decisions in his giving hundreds of millions of dollars to Phartma companies without any requirements to coordinate with NIH and his choices were poor to begin with. HOWEVER, in what turned out to be the most incompetent and botched HR move, they fired him by just taking his name and picture off the HHS/BARDA website without even telling him. They then assigned him to be an NIH employee under Francis taking with him from BARDA $1 Billion to work on diagnostics with Bruce Trumberg of NBIB.

Rick reacted by going public, hiring a lawyer, claiming whistleblower status and saying he was fired because he was pushing back against HHS and political pressure to fund bad science and certain companies and that he objected to pushing HC. In fact, there are e-mails and memos showing that he himself was pushing HC and giving millions to get it out there. He is an abject LIAR!

April 23, 2020 - Global - 2,500,000/170,000; USA - 827,000/47,000;

TF was uneventful. I was not at presser.....

HOWEVER, the presser was a disaster for the POTUS. All he did was fight with the press Someone from DHS presented data showing that sunlight, heat and humidity “kills’ the virus. Actually, they presented this at the TF meeting and the POTUS did not even know about it. When the DHS guy presented it, the press tore it apart as a gimmick from the POTUS.

Also, the POTUS incredibily made the comment that one should consider injecting or swallowing these disinfectants (including chlorax-like substances) as a “cure”. Deb almost fainted on stage,

Thank God I was not there,

After the presser, CNN with Erin Burnett presented a segment of the clash between the scientists (almost exclusively me) and the POTUS. They showed a point-by-point contrast of me versus the POTUS. Let us see what the reaction is tomorrow at the TF meeting.

After the presser (about 1 hour) Deb Birx texted and then called me saying it was good that I was not there since after the presser, the POTUS called her into the Oval and started yelling at her saying “You and Fauci have destroyed the country and the economy. I should never have listened to you. You have completely destroyed us.” He kept saying this over and over again and was yelling at her. I encouraged her that we are OK and at the end of the day she and I will be loved by the people we care about. She was relieved and after wrote me a text sincerely thanking me.

April 24, 2020 - Global - 2,600,000/177,000; USA - 860,000/49,000.

Press having a field day trashing the POTUS for his statement about “drinking bleach”. Consuming the press.

Will brief Governors today with the POTUS. Governor talk went well. Cuomo stated what I had been saying all along that we need a “partnership” between USG and States. Note the POTUS goes back and forth and has often said that the States are on their own and when I say “partnership” there was some concern that I was contradicting POTUS

For first time the POTUS had a presser and walked out without answering any questions. Axios wrote that he may greatly diminish pressers. He used to love them due to the “ratings” of viewers. However, his people are now telling him that it is greatly hurting his approval ratings.

April 27,2020

Great news from Emily Erbelding: The randomized placebo controlled trial of Remdesivir in hospitalized patients with COVID-19 disease has fully enrolled 1063 patients throughout the world (ACTT-1 Study). The DSMB met and indicated that remdesivir had a 31% higher rate of recovery compared to the placebo group (p < 0.001). The death rate approached significance (P=0.059).

Data sets not complete and will likely require a few mored days to tidy up.

However, the site investigators will be notified tomorrow night at 7:00 PM for ethical reasons - to make sure that those who might be on the placebo limb would have the opportunity to get Remdesivir and all other placebo-controlled trials need to consider Remdesivir as now SOC. This information will almost certainly leak and so I have decided to ask Mark Meadows if I could announce these preliminary data at a presser at the WH tomorrow (Wednesday).

April 29, 2020 - Global - 3,000,000/203,000

USA - 1,100,000/58,000;

Eventful day. Was supposed to present the Remdesivir findings at the usual 5:00 PM press conference at the WH. Marc Short called me when I was at NIH office and said to rush down to Wh since the POTUS was going to have a press availability with John Bell Edwards (Democratic Governor of Lousiana). George Adams drove me down to Wh with lights flashing and we got there in 17.5 minutes (Yikes). I present the data to multiple cameras in the Oval Office with POTUS sitting there. POTUS took me aside and said”Be enthusiastic, Tony. Be Optimistic, we need to open up the economy. It is very important”. I told him that I would tell it like it is. He nodded OK. I gave ameasure, accurate presentation. Great success.

In afternoon, HHS (with Paul Mango, Alex Azar, Bob Kadlec, Peter Marks, Bob Johnson, Francis Collins, Bruce Tromberg) presented our new vaccine strategic plan to the TF led by Deb Birx. Deb immediately tore everything apart (somewhat overly done).. Poor Peter Marks took the brunt of it. She said we should have brought in all the companies that have a track record with their platforms and guided them and funded them to go after COVID-19 instead of waiting for companies to come in themselves and ask for money. She does not like “newer technology” such as mRNA, DNA, and even some virasl vectors.

She likes antigens, whole killed, etc. A bit overdetermined in her prejudice.

However, she did have a point that btu did not fully realize that this is the problem that I have had with BARDA for years. They just give out money without coordinating anything. Very tense meeting!!

The rest of the world still pushing that we are not doing enough testing.

Clerarly a trend towards the Comms folks (Kayleaigh and Alyssa) focusing on economic re-entry and trying to hold back to POTUS from his disastrous press confererences and so the pressers are being cut back. None today; only the above Oval with Gov. Edwrads

Becoming rather friendly with Jared. Clearly, he respects me

May 14, 2020

Moncer Slaou joins the team as the “Czar” for Vaccines/Therapeutics/Diagnostics

May 15, 2020

IMPORTANT DAY AT WHITE HOUSE: Wen to White House as usual, but today was a Rose garden ceremony announcing the “Operation Warp Speed” which is the interagency plan to develop a COVID-19 vaccine by the end of the year and have 100 million doses by November and 300 million by Jan. 2021. This is the plan that we have been working on for some time at NIAID.

In addition, the occasion was to introduce Moncef Slaoui as the “Czar” for the project and General Gus Perna as the COO or logistic person for the supply of vaccine doses.

Important event was my meeting with the POTUS in the context of our ongoing “feud”. We (those who would be on the stage with him in the Rose Garden - Sec. Azar and Sec, Mark Esper (DoD), General Mark Milley (Chair, Joint Chiefs); Gen. Gus Perna, Francis Collins, Deb Birx) were all in the Oval waiting for the POTUS. We all had masks on. The POTUS walked in from the

Inner Office and immediately caught my eye and opend up his arms.

He gently pulled my into the outer office where the TV was on giving the economic forecast and said. “Tony, you are losing me trillions of fucking dollars.”

Then he said something interesting. He said: “Tony, you and I are OK. There is no problem between us We are similar is some respects. You are playing me and I am playing you. I know you better than you think and I respect you and like you. You need to do your thing and I need to do mine; as long as you understand tht I need to keep this country alive.” Then as we were ready to go out, he looked at all of us and said: “Do we really need to have those masks on. It sends the wrong

signal”.

I told him that we should keep them on since it would be an unforced error to take them off. The press would kill us. His response was “Who gives a shit about the press; they will try to kill us no matter what we do.” Francis and Deb looked to me and I said: “Mr. President, I will not remove the mask. I must wear it.” He had a look of exasperation on his face and said: “OK, if you insist” (Francis and Deb sighed a sigh of relief as it was clear that Deb was willing to romove the mask; Francis was with me).

However, he turned to the generals and

Azar and Esper and said: “You guys, take you masks off, you hear me?”. They dutifully did and we all walked out to theRose Garden. After the ceremony when we came back to the Oval and were about to disperse, he came over to me and said: “Tony, we are good, right?” I said: “We are good Mr. President”.

May 17,2020

What is evolving is that states that are opening thus far are not seeing an increase in cases. In fact, some are seeing decreases. We need another couple of weeks to see what is happening.

Interesting that they might be paying attention more to mask use and social distancing as they open. This is true EXECPT for the young people who are going to the bars (Milwaukee) and beaches (South Carolina,

There are 2 patterns: Acute outbreaks in nursing homes (1/3 of all dealth are in nursing homes), prisons, and meat packing plants, and industries where workers are in dormitory-like quarters.

This is easily recognizable and quickly contained.

Then there is the more subtle community spread that gradually accelerates and requires contact tracing. It is conceivable that we will progress in the next weeks with little to modest community spread and many acute outbreaks as described accounting for the spikes that we are seeing and will see.

~6:00 PM received a call from Jared Kushner. He wanted to feel me out about a few things. Primarily he wanted to get my take on Operation Warp Speed. He wanted my perspective on the structure, what it meant, my take on Moncef Slaoui.

He did not fully realize and it was good that I explained to him that the development of the COVID-19 vaccine(s), i.e. the science and implementation of trials is WHAT I DO. I asked him to make sure that when new people come in and new structures are formed that we do not “reboot” and re-invent the wheel.

We are well into the process and I just do not want any person or organization or structure get in my way. My team is the best that there is. I believe he got it.

He wanted to know how the military fits into this. It was clear during the conversation that he is the link to the POTUS and his skepticism about HHS and Azar came through. Nowhere was there mention of the VP, which aligns w what I am witnessing, i.e. the dichotomy between Jared and the POTUS versus OVP. He spoke of the role of the military in logistics and supply. I emphasized that I do not do that; I develop vaccines and do clinical trials. I punt to others to produce and distribute.

Also, it is clear that he wants to phase out the Task Force and move on the more of he various agencies of government doing their thing. He will keep Deb Birx who clearly is in his favor. It seems to me that there is a lot of “palace intrigue’ going on or about to go on. We shall see.

June 3, 2020

Had a very difficult experience today. The POTUs called my cell and screamed at me because I had mentioned to the Press (likely on a Howard Bauchner podcast or a Politico interview that the duration of immunity for common coronaviruses was 6 months to 1 year and that although we do not know the duration of vaccine immunity, it is possible that we may have to use additional boosts. Apparently the press blew this up and said that the vaccine will only protect for a very short time. The POTUS was very angry. He said I cannot keep doing this to him. He said he lover me but the country is in trouble and I am making it worse. He said the stock market only went up 600 points and it should have gone up 1000 points and so I cost the country $1 trillion. Quite a phone call.

June 15, 2020 - Global - 7,700,000/428,000 USA - 2,100,000/116,000;

.

BARDA requesting FDA to pull back the EUA for Hydroxychloroquine and Chloroquine, I was always against the EUA for HC and Ch since I did not believe that it fulfilled the criteria (some indication of efficacy) for an EUA: see link below. Also, this is the issue that Rick Bright has blown the whistle on, i.e. saying that he was pressured into recommending to FDA (when he was head of BARDA) to issue the EUA.

My Note: An EUA was not needed for HCQ since the drug was already licensed and doctors could prescribe it for COVID off label. The EUA made HCQ from stockpile available to hospital’s despite the fact its value lie when taken early, and not after symptoms became severe enough to be hospitalized. As such it never became available to outpatients where would have helped the most.

Furthermore, Doctors who tried to prescribe it had prescriptions were rejected by leading pharmacies because Trumps NIH Guidelines recommended against it. When Trump came down with COVID he said nothing about taking HCQ and instead opted for EUA drugs Remdesivir and Regeneron .

Call from Jeremy Berg at Pitt sending me a [paper] Cell Host & Microbe by a Chinese group Shi-Hui Sun et al: A mouse model of SARS-CoV-2 Infections and Pathogenesis. 28: 1-10, July 8, 2020 (Online first) indicating that the Chinese were making CRISPR.Cas9 knockin mice for ACE-2 that were made 30 weeks ago, which would be August, 2019 Why would they be doing that last summer???

They could have been studying SARS, but they already had mouse models. Possible they just wanted to use a better technique CRISPR) OR they knew that SARS-CoV-2 already existed and the outbreak was alread ongoing.

My Note: The timing is interesting but mouse models are used for testing Sars like coronaviruses and this model is an improved model that just happened to have been made just before Sars-Cov-2 was circulating, and subsequently used for Sars-Cov-2. The paper simply introduced the model with Sars- Cov-2 data

Something similar happened in US when RML scientist Michael Letko developed a system in 2019 that could easily test which RBD sequences could access each receptor. In January 2020 the Chinese announced they had isolated a novel coronavirus and made the genome public on January 10. Letko said he dropped everything to try to identify the receptor. Letko discovered, it could infect human cells using the same receptor that SARS uses, ACE2.

He posted a preprint online January 21 with Vincent Munster

https://archive.ph/6Tn7T

https://archive.ph/FI2LB

August 4, 2020 - Global - 18,000,000/688; USA - 4,700,000/155,000

Amazing Day - We were supposed to have a routine TF meeting today. We were waiting in the Sit Room for a 3:00 PM start and the VP was late at 3:15 PM. Marc Short then came in and said that the POTUS wanted some of us ogo to the Oval Office. We we got there, the entire senior staff was there (everyone). The VP sat the following around the Resolute Desk - me, Deb, Redfield, Giroir, Azar. The POTUS then started eyeing and throwing around the Fuck word: “What the fuck are you people doing? Deb you are saying that the pandemic is now in the rural areas. First the cities, now the rural areas. Where is it now. I am saying we have it under control and you say it is everywhere. Tony, you are always contradicting me. Giroir, you say HC does not work (he said this on SOTU on Sunday). I took it and many good doctors swear by it. The fucking message. You need to be positive”. Then he started raving that we are seeing more cases only because we are doing more testing. The other countries look good because thery are not testing. At that point, Kellyanne Conway took over and made the point that we can say what we feel is correct, but if it contradicts the pOTUS, they need to hear about it in the Oval or Sit Rooms and not hear about it for the first time on TV.

Everyone remained silent. At that point I figured enough is enough. I said: “Okay Mr.

President. We are now in the Oval Office. And so you need to hear it directly from me. Increased testing does not increase cases. When you increase testing you will of course pick up some asymptomatic cases, whom you might not notice. However when you have increased positivity and hospitalizations , and increased deaths that means that there are truly more cases. He then changed the subject and started talking about the fact that deaths are down. After I broke the ice, then Deb, Redfield, and Giroir chipped in. All in all it was a manifestation that he is desparate and still does not understand the pandemic. Very interesting encounter.

After that we went to the Doctors Huddle with Brad Smith and Adam Boehler to talk about tesing and schools. More later.

My Note: We did not have any historic positivity data at that point. Increased testing was also occurring in hospitals with patients treated for other issues and despite not having COVID symptoms they were counted as hospitalized COVID patients which meant hospitals could collect more from Medicare. Anyone dying with a positive COVID test despite dying of other reasons was then counted as a COVID death (almost 1/3 of COVID deaths died for other reasons). Also there was the issue of false positives with PCR tests at Ct<40. Anyone with CT 30 or above most likely had no replication competent virus and were not infectious or infected.

August 8,2020 - Global - 19,200,000/716,000; USA - 4,900,000/160,200.

POTUS acting even more erratically. Keeps insisting that increased case numbers are due only to increased testing, ignoring the increases in percent positive, hospitalizations and deaths (>1000/day).

Inconsistent message to me whether they want me on TV. David Muir (ABC

World News Tonight) requested me and we accepted and thought that it was cleared and then silence. Same for NBC Morning News with Savannah Guthrie.

Whether or not to open schools has been a major topic of discussion as we approach the school opening timetable. I have been saying consistent that we should have as a default position our attempt/intention to open schools because of the psychological effects on children and in some areas, the dependence on schools for breakfast and lunch. Also, the potential deleterious downstream effects on working parents.

HOWEVER, the primary consideration must be the health, safety and welfare of the children and the teachers, and the potential spreading to others (i.e. family members). I have stated that one size does not fit all and decisions should be based on the level of infection in the community:

My Note: Children and Teachers in good health were not at high risk of COVID, especially the former. And was staying at home any safer when one or more household members went to work and then went home, potentially infected due to high levels of community spread prompting school closures. The logic is faulty

August 11, 2020 - Global USA

Very serious e-mail from Deb Birx this AM and my response to her:

Deb:

I am totally with you. I will, and I trust we all will, continue to give the message that we have been giving. This is an historic pandemic and it is our responsibility to do everything we can to contain, control and eliminate it. We cannot just let the virus do its thing since people will die. Children get infected and some of them get very sick and they almost certainly play a role in the community spread. We should hold strong on this. Perhaps we can still be value-added, but we need to discuss that if the POTUS is following Atlas’s advice and not ours, then what are we doing there?

My Note: Mr Science provides no statistical data just generalizations

Important meeting at Task Force - Trump has brought in a Dr. Scott Atlas, a radiation oncologist from Stanford Hoover Institute. He is a FOX News Commentator and Trump has seen him on FOX. He is against everything we are saying. He wants to open schools in red Zone, feels that children do not get sick (or even transmit when they get infected) and so we should let herd immunity form. He wants to protect the vulnerable but does not realize that we do no do that effectively. He wants to only test symptomatic people. He obviously does not believe in community spread. This is going to be a real problem. The rightwing press is saying that Trup brought him in to counter me and Birx. Atlas now has an office in the EEOB and he is Special Assistant to the POTUS. He is also now a member of the Task Force.

August 14, 2020 - Excess death calculations has us actually at 200,000 deaths from COVID-19.Global USA

Did Task Force today. Had brief discussion with Scott Atlas. He is concerned about being seen as the “anti-Fauci”. He says that he is not in favor of “let it rip” to develop herd immunity. He believes in herd immunity, but he feels that we should just protect the elderly and vulnerable in nursing homes. He may be backing off on what he was “supposed” to have said. Clearly, Deb Birx and to some extent Redfield feel that he is dangerous. He might be, but I really need to hear from him what is position is on a variety of subjects.

My Note: And how many of those excess deaths were lockdown related. We already know at least 1/3 of those reported COVID deaths were not COVID. So 115,000 COVID deaths despite lockdowns on top of 85,000 non-Covid Excess deaths caused by lockdowns and other mitigation measures. 1/3 of those 115,000 COVID deaths were in nursing homes meaning Community COVID deaths were 76,000

August 18, 2020 - Global - 22,000,000/773,000; USA - 5,400,000/170,000

I continue to be kept out of the classic press but am getting in through indirect ways. Still have >1000 deaths per day. Scott Atlas now the main person that Trump listens to. I have reached out to Scott to give him a fair chance to explain to me exactly how he feels about children getting infected and the issues with letting community spread happen. We obviously differ here. He and White House feel that we can let children get infected in schools since they do not get sick and we just need to protect the vulnerable in Nursing Homes. Fallacious thinking since there are many not in Nursing Homes who are vulnerable such as obese people, diabetics, hypertensives, etc.

ALSO, many reports coming out now about long term cardiovascular and brain effects in younger people who were not even sick enough to go to the hospital, and who were merely home in bed for a couple of weeks. ALSO, more younger people dying.

Of note, I was the only one of the Doctors in the TF who was noit invited to be present in the Sit Room for the Governors’s call today.

My Note: Wow, we knew long term effects after less than 5 months. Maybe being lockdown eating twinkies and drinking beer and being scared death by folks like Fauci and socially isolated is bad for your cardiovascular and mental health. Duh

August 26, 2020 - Global USA

• POTUS holding more briefings with Scott Atlas and others (Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, Dr. Martin Kulldorff, and Dr. Cody Meissner) to the exclusion of Deb Birx. Making it very awkward for her. I have been out of the briefing loop for some time now.

August 31, 2020 - Global USA

Trump stoking violence (racial tensions) in Kenosha, WI and Portland, OR

QAnon misrepresenting data from CDC that says that about 9000 out of the >180,000 deaths reported for COVID-19 had only COVID-19 on the death certificate. The remainder also had other underlying conditions. QAnon is saying that all the other deaths had nothing to do with COVID-19. The POTUS loves this and is tweeting that Fauci and Birx shut down the country for only 9000 deaths. What an idiot!!

September 13, 2020

Important Day!! - POTUS called me up at around 11:20 AM (Sunday) and started a diatribe about my interview on Friday with Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC.

He went on and on about how negative I was on the show. He said that I was great on Thursday with John Roberts (FOX) and so “what happened” to make me negative. I tried to explain to him that the entire message was not all negative. was really saying that there is a risk with the upticks in ND, SD, MT and other states for a surge if we do not intensify the public health measures of masks, distance, crowds, etc.

I emphasized that what I was saying is that we can control this without having to shut down. As soon as I mentioned the word “shut down” he went off saying we will never again shut down as if I was suggesting that we would when I was saying just the opposite. He then went off on asking about vaccines and saying that I should take credit for success instead emphasizing failures. It really was stream of consciousness. We ended the call on a friendly note, but it was clear that he did not want me to do this anymore. He mentioned whether or not I like Trump, I should not do this. I told him that I do not dislike him and he knows that. He agreed. I will either have to stay off TV or continue to disappoint him since I cannot change my message.

September 26, 2020 -

Major conflict between Deb and Atlas. See below with Deb’s daily report.

Atlas says that we do not need to test for asymptomatics since the only thing that counts is preventing vulnerable people from dying. He does not see the connection between asymptomatic young people (without hospitalization and deaths rising → older and vulnerable (with later hospitalization and deaths rising). We are heading to a major clash between deb/me/Bob versus Atlas

September 29, 2020 - Global - 33,200,000/1,000,000; USA - 7,100,000/205,000

1st Presidential Debate tonight. Horrible “shit show”. Trump was embarrassing, continually interrupting Biden, bullying all the way, making no sense, lying. Moderator Chris Wallace could not control him. Trump refused to denounce White Supremacists and when asked about the “Proud Boys”, Trump said” “Stand down, stand by” essentially endorsing them. Alos, he misquoted me saying that I am against masks. He also said that I praised him for saving lives by shutting down China travel. Reporters (Chris Cuomo, Jim Sciutto, Maggie Fox, etc) continually texting me during the debate wanting me to counter what he said about me and masks

October 7, 2020 - Global USA

Alex Azar met yesterday with Atlas and his 3 stooges - Jay Bhattacharya (Stanford), Sunetra Gupta (Oxford) and Martin Kulldorff’s (Harvard). Seems that he is buying into Atlas

October 9, 2020 - Global USA

We are clearly seeing resurgences in various parts of USA, esp. the upper mid-west and the Northwest (see below). This is exactly what we (Deb and I) predicted would happen if young people did not abide by public health recommendations (masks, crowds, etc). It also validates my insisting to the VP that although I did not like being the “skunk at the picnic”, the upticks in case positivity clearly predicted the increase incases → hospitalizations → deaths.

Also, shows that Atlas and his 3 stooges are completely incorrect.

October 29, 2020 - Global - 44,000,000/1,200,000; USA - 8,800,000/227,000

POTUS in complete denial that there is a raging pandemic and everything is spiking. He keeps insisting that we have “turned the corner” or “rounding the turn”

Some potentially nefarious stuff going on. The FDA career scientists are hesitant to grant EUAs to Lilly’s and Regeneron’s mAb based on the current data.

Alex Azar is really pushing them and furious because he thinks FDA is “slow-walking” the process so as not to have it out before the election in 5 days. Clearly, Alex wants to please the POTUS so that they can say that they have a breakthrough (similar to Convalescent plasma nonsense) right before the election. Azar then asked NIH (Collins), CDC (Redfield) and ASPR (Kadlec) to weigh in since the legislation that established the EUA process (dating back to the Anthrax situation in 2001) requires the CDC, NIH, and ASPR Directors to weigh in on EUA decisions (even though they have not done so in the past). Cliff and I had long conversation with Francis on his way down to HHS to discuss with Azar.

November 11, 2020 - Global USA

Steady surges continue with 10 days in a row of> 100,000 cases/day.

Trump fired Sec Mark Esper and several DoD civilian officials (high ranking) have resigned. Fear is that Trump is stacking the DoD with loyalists if he really wants to do a coup and steal the election/democratic process. Very scary times. The GOP leadership that are backing Trump (McConnell, McCarthy, Jordan, Blount) are incredibly shameful. Reminds me historically of Hitler getting duly elected to Chancellorship and then forcibly taking over the country. Amazing!!

November 13, 2020 - Global - USA -

Pandemic surge continues. Curve is exponential

Moving along with the deployment of vaccine, Pfizer is putting in for their EUA.

There should be 20 million doses of vaccine ready to deploy in December.

Moderna will be doing the initial examination of data within days and likely will have comparable efficacy data to Pfizer. Their will have 15 million doses for

deployment in December. Thus, 20 + 15 = 40 million doses for 15 - 20 million people in December. Aim to is get nursing homes (NH) covered quickly. 1.5 million people in NHs + 1.5 million staff = 3 million people (6 million doses)

November 16, 2020 - Global - 54,300,000/1,300,000; USA -

11,000,000/246,000

Continual surge: 138,000 new infections yesterday. POTUS has no interest at all in the Pandemic. He is focusing on blocking Biden from being POTUS. He is embarrassing the USA. However, 72,000,000 voted for him. Difficult to understand. Craziness has overtaken part of our country (1/2).

Jared Kushner did call me up right before the press briefing related to the Moderna vaccine announcement

December 25, 2020 - Global - 78,00,000/1,700,000; USA - 18,600,000/328,000

Trump at Mar-a Largo while country in crisis. Cases still surging in certain areas (see below). Relief bill in purgatory since he does not want to sign it because of disagreement about amount of relief ($600 versus $2000). Everyone had agreed to $600 even though the Dems wanted more. White House staff agreed to the bill. Sent to Trump for signature, except that now that he has finally looked at it, he wants the $2000 per person, which is what the Dems wanted to begin with, and the GOP objected to. And so now, he is bucking against his own GOP.

In the meantime, people are starving without aid. Also, the USG might shut down since the Omnibus budget bill has not been signed either. Amidst all this, Trump is pardoning a large number of people (>40), almost all who were involved in the issues surrounding the probe of him and the impeachment matters. He also pardoned Gen. Flynn, Roger Stone, and Charle Kushner.

January 5, 2021

Trump going completely crazy. Was recorded on an hour-long telephone call with Secretary of State of Georgia Brad Raffensperger to change the votes and asked for 11, 780 votes to be changed (he lost Georgia by 11,779). Clearly a criminal act of trying to influence an election.

More cowardly GOPs are backing Trump in the House Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and Senate (Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Josh Hawley (R-MO)

January 7, 2021 - Global - 85,500,000/1,900,000; USA - 21,300,000/360,000

Record number of deaths yesterday - >3963. Today another record at 4000. Surging continues.

Slow start in the implementation of administration of vaccines. Was supposed to have 20 million doses distributed and administered by December 31. Today there have been 15 million distributed and 5 million administered.

January 8, 2021 - Global USA

4111 Deaths!! Record hospitalizations.

My Note: they are vaccinating 300,000- 500,000 mostly elderly per day, how many of these 40000+ deaths are due to the vaccines and being called COVID?

I have been on the phone with Jeff Zients a few times today. I checked the number for rojected requirement of vaccines to fulfill the promise of 100 million doses in arms in 1st 100 days of Biden administration. The number in the Biden slides (Kessler derived) was 275 million doses and 135 million people (getting 2 doses) by end of April. I called Moncef Slaoui and got the actual numbers and they totaled 189 million. I called Jeff and let him know.

He checked with Kessler who then checked with Moncef and they figures that the doses that had already been allocated prior but not given yet would make up for the difference. I am concerned that we (Biden team) will not meet the promise. Too many vicissitudes in vaccine production. Perhaps Janssen will bale us out with the 25 million doses in March and 40 million in April (single dose required). Then, Biden team announced that they would not hold back any doses to save for 2nd shot, but will immunize everyone then can with doses they have. This places a lot of faith in the precision of the production/delivery of doses. They may have to pause with 1st doses to catch up with 2nd dose requirement.

January 9, 2021 - Global - 87,600,000/1,900,000; USA - 22,000,000/368,000

The pandemic is getting more scary. Every day more and more cases and deaths. Patients in the hallways in California. Nurses and MDs exhausted. It seems that people are getting infected who are being careful and have no idea why they are getting infected. N501Y mutation is here in the USA, but it is not dominant. We may actually have our own mutant that we have not recognized since the CDC has not really been looking.

January 10, 2021 - Global - 88,400,000/1,900,000 USA - 22,100,000/371,100

And the surge goes on..... There is a real concern that we have our own mutant that is resulting n an increased surge in cases.

People are saying they have no idea how they got infected since they have been observing public health recommendations.

January 13, 2021 - Global - 90,100,000/1,900,000; USA - 22,700,000/379,000

The surge continues. Could this be that we are dealing with our own highly contagious variant, but we do not realize it since the CDC sequencing surveillance has not been very comprehensive as has the UK surveillance?

My Note: Would not vaccinating in the middle of a pandemic with a high prevalence of virus in circulation not drive viral evolution and variants

January 20, 2021

Inauguration Day! Trump refusing to attend inauguration and left with a flare that was very sparsely attended. Biden was at Mass as Trump flew off to Mar-a-Largo. Trump’s speech was surrealistic talking about all the great accomplishments of his Presidency. He also strongly hinted that he will be back with a “movement”. He is a very dangerous man!!

I am preparing for my early AM speech to WHO Executive Board tomorrow. Beth Cameron has given me much leeway on the Speech (which her staff put together).

Mutants of SARS-CoV-2 getting much play in the scientific “preprint” arena. Final papers will soon come out. We will put restrictions (requirement for pre - and post - flight testing + quarantine) from RSA.

Will brief POTUS Biden tomorrow.

Am still quite achy from vaccine booster shot from yesterday.

January 25, 2021 - Global - 99,000,000/2,100,000; USA - 25,000,000/418,000

• Did really good WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM Panel chaired by John Mickethwait (Bloomberg) with panelists: Prime Minister of Greece Kyriakos Mitsotakis; Nancy Brown (CEO of American Heart Association) and Frans van Houten (CEO of Royal
  Philips)

• The vaccine is now being referred to as the “Fauci Ouchie”

January 27, 2021 - Global USA

Really good relations developing with the WH Comms team led by Jen Psaki and particularly Courtney Rowe. Dramatic difference from Trump WH Comms

January 26, 2021 - Global - 99,000,000/2,100,000; USA - 25,200,000/420,000

VP Harris visited NIH for her booster shot with Husband Greg Emhoff. She and I did a PSA together.

Had moving conversation with Moncef Slaoui who felt that the Biden people were discrediting and bad-mouthing OWS that Moncef led. In fact, Moncef did a fabulous job in getting 2 vaccines (Moderna and Pfizer) approved (EUA) that are highly efficacious with other candidates (Janssen, AZ, Novavax) not far behind. He feels badly for the OWS team and for himself. I told him that he has done a fabulous and historic job in what he accomplished. I told him that to me and many others, he is a hero. He was very touched by the conversation.

February 21, 2021 - Global - 110,700,000/2,500,000; USA - 27,900,000/499,000

Matt Pottinger’s interview with Margaret Brennan on Face the Nation. Good summary of history of the early months: https://cbsn.ws/3pGH9tR

Excerpt from interview

MARGARET BRENNAN: Let’s unpack some of what you were saying about the response here at home. It’s- it’s been widely reported that you went into the Oval Office alongside National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien and told President Trump at the end of January that this would be the greatest national security threat that he ever faced. Did he understand the gravity of what you were saying at that time?

POTTINGER: I think he did. That was something that Robert O’Brien told the president. To the president’s credit, he decided to shut down travel from China.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Around that same time, though, the American public is being told that this is not a direct threat to them. Robert O’Brien was on FACE THE NATION saying exactly that:

ROBERT O’BRIEN FTN 2/2/20: Right now, there’s- there’s no reason for Americans to panic. This is something that is low risk, we think, in the U.S.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Is that what you thought at the time?

POTTINGER: I thought that it was going to be potentially quite- quite devastating. You could match that against quotes from- from a great number of public health experts in this country and abroad who were saying similar things because we did not have hard evidence from the Chinese government that this thing was- was as dangerous as it was. So my view was, let’s prepare for the worst.

MARGARET BRENNAN: So in preparing for the worst inside the National Security Council, you started telling your staffers to wear masks. Yet the American public wasn’t told definitively by the CDC to wear masks until April, why?

POTTINGER: Remember, we misjudged the nature of this thing to think that it was like flu, one of the mistakes that followed on from that was the misjudgment by public health officials in this country to- to not advocate for the widespread generalized use of face coverings, cloth masks, surgical masks and what have you. That was, they feared shortages, rightly. We’d put all of our mask making supply chains into, guess where, China. And China was not making it easy for us to get access to- to additional supplies. So the CDC, that was an understandable thing to do. But it then made the mistake of conflating that with a- a set of advice that masks don’t work effectively for the general public.

That was a big mistake. Robert O’Brien and I weren’t really willing to wait. And so we thought that the risk of a outbreak in the White House could be potentially devastating for the United States. It would- it would- that would create a national security risk. And so in early April, we started looking for supplies of masks. I ended up calling a foreign government. I called some senior officials in Taiwan just to- just to ask for lessons learned. Taiwan had done better than probably any other country in the world at containing this- this virus. And so in the course of my conversation, I asked whether they had masks available. They agreed to send a shipment of half a million masks just a couple of days later.

We put those masks into the national stockpile so they’d be available to frontline medical workers. I made sure that one box got delivered to the White House and was disseminated through the NSC and- and the White House medical unit.

MARGARET BRENNAN: So you knew enough to call a foreign government to ask for masks, but the American public wasn’t being told yet to wear them and the president wasn’t wearing them. How do you make sense of that?

POTTINGER: Yeah, it’s frustrating. The- the mask misstep cost us dearly. It was the one tool that was widely available, at least homemade, you know, cotton masks were widely available. It was the one effective, widely available tool that we had in the arsenal to- to deal with this. But public health officials were stuck in this sort of flu mentality. It- it was- it was a- it was a grave misstep. The other really grave misstep, and this is the one that I think we haven’t rectified yet, and we’ve got to rectify it. It has to do with the collection and analysis of critical data about how this virus is spreading in real time, so that we can stay ahead of it, ensure that- that we don’t get sucker punched by a new variant that could compromise the effectiveness of our- of our vaccine. And this is an area where the Centers for Disease Control has stumbled very, very badly. I know that the new director, Dr. Walensky, is- is working hard on trying to get- get a far greater number of samples of this virus genetically sequenced, which is critical. We- everyone should give as much support to her in that endeavor as possible. But there are cultural and organ- organizational problems that still need to be rectified at the CDC. If we’re- if we’re going to have a chance at success, both in bottling up this pandemic and also preventing the next one.

POTTINGER: Bob Redfield did the very best that he could with what he had. I’m talking about institutionally in the- in the belly of this institution, the CDC was unwilling to- to partner with industrial labs to do tens of thousands of sequences so- so that you could actually see where this thing was going. They wanted to do it internally.

And- and I think the reason for that is they want the data themselves so that they can publish. There’s a very powerful incentive within CDC culture to partner with academic institutions rather than private institutions and- and to collect data, submit for peer review articles that burnish your credentials. That’s a very slow process. That’s not the- the kind of incentive you want for dealing with a fast moving pandemic.

MARGARET BRENNAN: How much of this is a question of if this should be handled by public health officials at all, or whether a pandemic should be handed over to intelligence officials and handled like a national security threat?

POTTINGER: The intelligence community does need to prioritize the collection of intelligence on these kinds of bio threats rather than relying strictly on- on sister-to-sister relationships between our CDC and public health officials in other countries. But I don’t think that the intelligence community is going to be able to do more than that critical role of collecting and analyzing the information.

MARGARET BRENNAN: You’re clearly thinking a lot of what could have been done differently. Do you think that the Trump administration did the best it could?

POTTINGER: We had an impeachment, the first impeachment trial taking place as the coronavirus task force was meeting at a time when the country wasn’t focused on- on this pandemic. People in the White House were. People at Health and Human Services and at the CDC were. I- I never encountered anyone at a senior level who was not deeply seized by the- the major weight of what we were facing. I do think that people did their best.

I’m doing this Hot Wash, as I call it, in the- in the spirit of trying to help understand that the narrative that it was all political failures at the top is not true. And so what I’m trying to- to bring to light here is that we have a deeper problem with the permanent government in how we are organized culturally and- and organizationally to deal with this pandemic and with future ones. I want us to succeed at getting better.

March 24, 2021 - Global -123,900,000/2,700,000; USA - 29,800,000/541,300

• Moncef Slaoui fired from GSK Board of Directors for sexual harassment charges dating back a few years

April 20,2021

• I was on the governor’s call today. One of the questions that came up today was why we still have a mask mandate for outdoors. I agree that this is a problem. Rochelle answered that CDC is re-examining this issue. I feel that we should obviously say that if a person is out alone outside, they do not need to wear a mask

May 24, 2021

Appropriations Hearing (Senate and House) coming up next week. Interesting to see if they fixate on the lab. Escape theory. I had a very interesting and helpful conversation today with Christian Andersen of Scripps Research Institute. He was very emphatic that the work that was done at the Wu Han Institute in Association with our grant was not gain of function . In addition he confirmed that if you match the chimeric viruses that were made in the context of the NIH grant in Wuhan, they are not even close sequence wise to the SARS-CoV-2. Christian will be writing a letter together with some data on this topic; however, I feel much better now that he is in total support of what I have been saying.

June 4, 2021

Very important and very strange briefing of me by the CIA in the NIH SCIF this afternoon (5:00 PM). I received an extremely strange an unexpected briefing today by the CIA related to the origin of the virus. Beth Cameron from NSC was listening in on one of the other screens.

And as it turns out she was as baffled as I was by the briefing. It was very similar to some of the very disappointing briefings that I had previously received in prior years from the CIA.

A young woman whose name was Camille Hartman gave most of the briefing. She was accompanied by what was probably the senior male CIA person and another young woman. Camille in my mind was almost pathetic in her naivety an obvious lack of appreciation of any of the science of what she was talking about.

She gave instances of things that she said were gotten by CIA intercepts of conversations in China, particularly in Wuhan. her major point was that she feels but the Chinese have not been transparent about what was going on in their labs since there were no reports publicly of what they found out from intercepts. This included the transfer of Pangolin viruses from a group in Beijing two Wu Han. They felt that this was being used in a study using transgenic mice. I have no idea why this was any great concern to them since it would be perfectly natural for a lab that studies coronavirus to look at Pangolins. In addition, she spoke about the observation that WIV was sampling Pangolins and several members of WIV took a trip to obtain Pangolins.

They also spoke about the fact that they have information from sources that unknown experiments were conducted by the military in Wu Han. The thing that blew me away about how naive and uninformed they are was the fact that they mentioned that they had word that in July of 2020 there was a super spreading event in China related to passage of virus in the laboratory. This astounded Beth and I for the same reason. Why would they suspect that a super spreading event that occur in the middle of a major outbreak in China was related to the passage of virus in the laboratory?

The naivete of the briefing stunned both Beth and me. Also, in the matter in which she was asking me questions almost made me believe she was grilling me prompting me to say somewhat tongue in cheek whether I should have a lawyer with me. I got on the phone with Beth immediately after the briefing and she was very upset saying that she was going to check up the chain who and why this briefing was called and why there was no forwarding material to prepare us for what they were doing. There is something very fishy about all of this.

My Note: Nothing Fishy. Smart criminals like to create patsies who will be suspected of doing the crime they committed. That said Fauci’s reaction seemed a bit over the top and had me thinking “Doth protest too much”. Surely a government funded lab in China that worked with coronaviruses would be interested in Pangolins and work with the military on some projects. Heck, even our military works with non-military labs as seen with DARPA PREEMPT

June 20, 2021 - Global USA

Uneventful and somewhat relaxing day . Still trying to process the news from yesterday. Will have to live with uncertainty for the next three months.

As indicated above, Francis Collins organized a zoom call for today with a group of evolutionary biologists as well as Steve Sherry from the NIH databank in order to discuss this issue. Jesse bloom was also on the call. See email below from Francis having organized the meeting:

From: Collins, Francis (NIH/OD) [E] <collinsf@od.nih.gov>

Sent: Sunday, June 20, 2021 2:33 PM

To: Tabak, Lawrence (NIH/OD) [E] < lawrence.tabak@nih.gov>; Fauci, Anthony (NIH/NIAID) [E] <afauci@niaid.nih.gov>; Embry, Alan (NIH/NIAID) [E] <embrya@niaid.nih.gov>; Sherry, Steve (NIH/NLM/NCBI) [E] <sherry@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov>

Cc: Kristian G. Andersen <kga1978@gmail.com>; Bedford, Trevor <tbedford@fredhutch.org›; Bloom PhD, Jesse D <jbloom@fredhutch.org>; Garry, Robert F <rfgarry@TULANE.EDU>; rasmus_nielsen@berkeley.edu; spond@temple.edu

Subject: RE: URGENT: Seeking your expert advice

Allow me to suggest this agenda:

1. Introductions

2. Retrieval of SARS-CoV-2 reads deleted from SRA by submitter - Jesse Bloom

3. NCBI SOPs for handling submitter requests to delete reads in SRA - Steve Sherry

4. Likelihood of other sequence deletions from SRA? - Steve Sherry

5. Significance of this new sequence information for origin of SARS-CoV-2 - Jesse, Kristian,
   Trevor, Bob, Rasmus, Sergei

6. Discussion and next steps -

AllLooking forward to the discussion. Done Francis Please see the people copied on the above email for a list of those who were present at the zoom call. The only person on the list who was not there was Trevor Bedford who could not make the zoom connection. After considerable discussion among the group, it became clear that Jesse Bloom had really jumped the gun and made assumptions that the Chinese were surreptitiously hiding sequences by deleting them. Several of the scientists including Sergei Pond and Rasmus Nielsen felt that the sequences that were deleted and ultimately recovered

partially were not of any particular consequence in shedding any light on the origin of SARS Co V2. The entire group felt that this was an inappropriate move on the part of Jesse to publish a single author paper making serious innuendos without running it by anyone else. As it turns out after discussion with Steve Sherry who is in charge of the NIH Sequence Read Archive (SRA) from which the sequences were deleted, it became clear that this is not an unusual occurrence for scientists to delete sequences if they are found to be either inaccurate, not up to date, or listed on another databank. He went back and looked at the required email to have the Wuhan sequences deleted, and the Chinese had indicated that they were removing it because they were putting it on their own separate database. According to Steve this would be a perfectly valid reason to remove a sequence. This obviously is going to cause us a lot of difficulty since those who feel that the Chinese are trying to cover up a lab leak will certainly say that this deletion of sequences proves that that is the case.

It is really a shame that Jesse acted really in my opinion somewhat immaturely in making inflammatory statements in a preprint without further investigating the reasons behind the deletions.

The NIH came out with the following statement in response to press inquiries regarding the Bloom preprint:

NIH is aware of Dr. Bloom’s preprint submission. Staff at the National Library of Medicine, which hosts the Sequence Read Archive (SRA), have reviewed the submitting investigator’s request to withdraw the data. These SARS-CoV-2 sequences were submitted for posting in SRA in March 2020 and subsequently requested to be withdrawn by the submitting investigator in June 2020. The requestor indicated the sequence information had been updated, was being submitted to another database, and wanted the data removed from SRA to avoid version control issues. The submitting investigator published relevant

information about these sequences by preprint in March, 2020 and in a journal in June, 2020.

Submitting investigators hold the rights to their data and can request withdrawal of the data.

Currently, the National Library of Medicine (NLM) has no plans to change the policy that recognizes submitters rights to their own data and the right to petition that their data be withdrawn from the Sequence Read Archive (SRA). The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), part of the NLM that manages the database, is the U.S. participating member of the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration, which provides guidelines for withdrawing data:

http://www.insdc.org/documents/insdc-status-document.

NLM/NCBI can’t speculate on motive beyond a submitter’s stated intentions.

June 19, 2021 - Global USA

Horrible roller coaster day - Due to some acute transient right posterior chest pain 2 days ago, Ted Li order a CT scan. - I got a call from the radiologist at Sibley hospital where I had gotten a chest CT in the morning telling me that I had a lesion in my right lower lobe that he felt was a cancer (non-small cell carcinoma). I felt like I got hit like by a Mack truck. Doctor Li quickly followed up on this and show the film to Andrew Lerner at Sibley who is a pulmonologist specializing in pulmonary nodules. Doctor Lerner felt that it was more likely an inflammatory lesion and there were multiple other lesions that were very small throughout the right lower lobe. In addition, I had a pulmonary infarct in the right lowest segment that was definite. Again, Dr. Li called David Hellmann Who was with his son who is an oncologist who looked at it and said that it looks more benign then neoplastic and felt that it did not look like a non-small cell carcinoma. Finally, they showed the films via computer to Dr. Elliot Fishman who is the top radiologist at Hopkins. He agreed that it was more likely inflammatory and that the only definite thing on the film was the pulmonary infarct. He recommended a follow-up CT in three months and begin anticoagulation immediately with Eliquis.

July 7, 2021

I had a very important meeting today with the NSC led by Beth Cameron and Maher Bitar who is the senior director for intelligence programs at NSC. We met in the EEOB SCIF and discussed the briefing document that the NSC had presented to the President a week or so ago.

Beth wanted me to have an official briefing because of the catastrophic briefing that the amateurs from the CIA gave me several weeks ago. There were no new surprises for me in the briefing except that it became clear that the FBI has no idea what they’re talking about since they are convinced that the origin of COVID-19 is from a laboratory leak. The reasons that they give do not make any sense. In contrast the NSA gave some reasonable hypotheses leaning heavily towards a natural jump of species in the environment.

I spent some time explaining to Maher and Beth my own theories that the Chinese act like they’re covering up something even when they have nothing to cover up. They manifested this in their response to the original SARS-CoV-1 when they insisted this was just an atypical influenza when in fact it was the beginning of a coronavirus pandemic

In addition, they likely shot themselves in the foot when they denied the presence of wild animals in the market when we know they were present and the Chinese cleaned out the market before adequate testing of animals could occur.

In essence, they clouded the possibility of proving a natural emergence.

I urged the NSC folks to work closely with qualified card-carrying evolutionary virologists such as Kristian Andersen, Eddie Holmes, Bob Garry, Andy Rambaut, among others. I also explained to them the multiple reasons epidemiologically and molecularly why it is almost certain that the virus evolved naturally from a species jump, even though I emphasized that I keep an open mind about the possibility of a lab leak.

However, in this regard, I emphasized that just because two alternatives are possible that does not mean that they are equally probable. I believe that they understood where I was coming from and that it turned out to be a very good meeting.

My Note: One of the great mysteries. Why would China not want to prove natural emergence?. Perhaps this would make them look responsible, but would it be any worse than people think they engineered the virus and accidentally released it. Of course not. Of course in China people prefer to think it was a bioweapon released by the US which boomeranged and caused the US and West more harm.

Truth is Chinas leadership does not care what anyone thinks. Its not like they can be voted out of office and their importance economically means they are pretty much untouchable. The US right prefers to push the Chinese lab leak since this supports their anti-China rhetoric, while the left pushes natural origin to protect “Science”.

As I pointed out many times Operation COVID was likely a collaboration between the US, West and China to facilitate the end of Democracy and accelerate Global Techno-Fascism (China is not Communist its Fascist). The US provided the virus, and China provided the Psyop Theater in the early stages and allowed the release on Wuhan after verifying the benign quality of the virus to young and healthy people. The early lockdown in China whose effectiveness was proven with fake Chinese data provided the Public Health Techno Fascists in the West the excuse to lock us down and administer the deadly Operation Warp Speed Vaccines. The rest is history. I provided more details elsewhere

The debate over natural origin and accidental lab leak prevent people from considering a larger conspiracy involving deliberate release of either a natural or engineered virus. Fauci and Daszak are convenient scapegoats which is not to say they were not part of the conspiracy

July 8, 2021 -

Kristian Andersen, Bob Garry and many others came out yesterday with on a preprint server a paper strongly arguing with good evidence for a natural emergence of SARS-CoV-2 rather thsan a lab leak: The Origins of SARS-CoV-2: A Critical Review https://bit.ly/3jSK1Ep

CNN: “Coronavirus almost certainly came from an animal, not a lab leak, top scientists argue”

July 18,2021

Cases continue to increase. The question that is being asked is whether fully vaccinated people who have breakthrough infections can transmit the infection to others. Still no direct data either way

July 19, 2021

Jeff Z. called me early this AM (6:45 AM) concerned about the breakthrough infections of vaccinated people and waned my opinion about moving towards masking of vaccinated people who are in hot zones. I think that we should.

Jeff called again at 10:00 AM concerned about the time FDA is taking to grant a full BLA for the vaccines. He is acutely aware of the sensitivity of not interfering with or pressuring the FDA, but we need the BLA since many people are not getting vaccinated until the vaccines are

“fully approved”.

Also, Jeff want me to get firm information on how long it will take for the peds (11 years old and younger) approval to come.

Stock Market plunging >700 down due to concerns about the spread of the Delta variant.

Mayor Bill Di Blasio called and ask my opinion about a strategy that he would like to do to try and get more people vaccinated and safe from the delta variant. He is proposing to give the people of New York City two alternatives if they are not vaccinated: 1) get vaccinated or 2) be required to get tested with a nasal swab at least once a week. The mayor feels that people will likely get tired of getting tested every week and my opt to get vaccinated purely for the convenience of it. Even though the requirement for a nasal swab is indeed a mandate, the mayor feels that this is much less intrusive they mandate for a vaccine.

Note: This is remarkably similar to the OSHA Mandates that would be proposed in September (Fauci never mentioned it)

July 26, 2021

Important stuff going on!! We had at least two zoom meetings today with Jeff, Rochelle, Vivek, and Bechara to discuss the upcoming change in masking guidelines that the CDC will be proposing. It relates to the fact that data or showing that the level of virus in the nasopharynx of vaccinated people with asymptomatic breakthrough infections is similar according to CT values to that in individuals who are infected asymptomatically and who have not been vaccinated.

These data are strongly suggestive that individuals who are vaccinated and who get infected can’t transmit the virus to others as easily as an unvaccinated people. This is triggering the need to tell vaccinated people that when they go to situations that are indoors that now they have to wear a mask or should at least seriously consider wearing a mask 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 wayfor 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.

Done

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

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.

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.

August 20,2021

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 feels 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 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.

August 23, 2021 - Global USA

BLA granted for Pfizer by the FDA!!

My Note: The MAHA cabal tried to promote the theory that the license being given negated the liability waiver in the PREP Act. A clear reading of the Act proves this was not the case but they tried to make a conspiracy theory relating to the delay in using the approved labels as they used up stock with EUA labels, claiming thid was to provide immunity to Pfizer which it had regardless. This was when I realized MAHA had been taken over

August 27, 2021

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.

Sep 29, 2021

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 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 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.

My Note: Regarding the Flu Fauci is clearly wrong. He is comparing Apples to Oranges. Unlike Flu pretty much anyone who died in the COVID era was tested for COVID with a test that by virtue of its high Ct threshold gave a large number of false positives if they tested positive and died for other reasons they went down as a COVID death. The only deaths reported as flu deaths in children were in those being treated for and tested for flu and then died. Not all children treated for flu were tested and so were not reported as specifically dying of flu (just respiratory infection or viral pneumonia)

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 leak 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 Capitol; “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.

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 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 PCO.

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.

Oct. 22, 2021 - Global - 242,000,000/4,900,000; USA - 45,100,000/730,000;

Larry Tabak was treated very poorly by several Republican congressmen and senators that he briefed yesterday. They continue to distort the truth insisting that I and to some extent doctor Collins have lied about whether or not the NIH funded “gain of function” research. They do not understand nor do they seem to want to understand that we were operating under the framework of P3CO which clearly indicates that the experiments that were funded by the NIH in Wuhan fell under that auspices and were properly conducted according to the existing guidelines at the time.

They want to hear none of that and continue to insist that we are denying that gain of function research was done and they put forth the preposterous suggestion if not the strong indication that the research that we funded created SARS-CoV-2. It looks like I’m going to have a tough time at the hearing on November the 4th since they are clearly politically motivated and are doing anything to discredit me and the NIH.

Oct. 23, 2021 Global - 242,300,000/4,900,000; USA - 45,300,000/733,834

There was the typical but not unexpected backlash on the part of the far-right media concerning the letter that Larry Tabak sent out concerning the progress report from EcoHealth that was late. In order to be totally transparent, Larry sent out a note to Congressman Comer saying that Ecohealth was late in submitting a progress report of their grant and mentioned in the letter that some of the mice in the study had an increase in viral growth and got sicker.

This was immediately taken up by the far right as proving that Fauci and Collins were lying when they said we did not fund gain of function research at Wuhan. They failed to mention that in that same letter Larry made it very clear that the research did not rise to the scrutiny of P3CO. In other words by our definition, it was not gain of function. This set off a firestorm of far right media craze saying that Francis and I lied. Therefore, I spent the greater part of today. tonight and tomorrow morning putting together a statement for the NIH website to correct the misrepresentation on the part of the far right media

Nov. 4, 2021 - Global - 247,472,724/5,012,337; USA - 46,180,190/747,970

Very important Day!!

Senate HELP Hearing - I together with Dawn O’Connell, Janet Woodcock, Rochelle Walensky testified before the Senate HELP hearing chaired by Patty Murray. We had expected to have the same conflict with Senator Rand Paul who continues to lie egregiously about the gain of function research which he claims was done at the Wuhan Institute of Virology funded by NIAID. During the last Hearing I had a direct conflict with him in which he accused me of being responsible for the death of four million people by funding research at Wuhan. At that time, I angrily said that he was the liar.

He continued along this line totally misrepresenting facts and accusing me of lying before the Congress. However, in contrast to what I did last time I did not aggressively call him a liar, which he is. What I did was very calmly counter all of his arguments that this was a proven leak from the Wuhan lab, that we were continuing to fund the Wuhan lab, and that I was responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic.

Chairperson Patty Murray was extremely helpful in allowing me to counter his ranting lies. I closed the session by saying then I have a great deal of respect for the institution of the United States Senate, but in fact everything he said was

“egregiously incorrect “ see link to the actual testimony below: https://bit.ly/2ZZzqAa

Nov. 11, 2021

Just to catch up on what is going on with the Moderna/NIH patent dispute. It has been very clear from the very beginning that there was a very strong collaboration between investigators at the Vaccine Research Center (VRC) and the Moderna company. In particular John Mascola, Barney Graham, and Kizzmekia Corbett were heavily involved in the development of the mRNA -1273 vaccine.

It was assumed by everyone that there would be a joint patent inventorship. And so, when a few months ago we heard that there was some disagreement among the tech transfer people of the NIH and the lawyers at Moderna, Frances and I engaged in a couple of telephone conversations with Steve Hoge and Stephane Bancef of Moderna.

Steve and Stephane said that the actual inventorship was solely Moderna and that although the NIH had rights to the patent and licensing of the S2P immunogen, Moderna claimed that the actual “inventorship” was theirs.

This is critical since even though we would get a considerable amount of royalty from this technicality and even though we could be “co-owners” of the patent but not inventors of the patent this would still give Moderna complete control over who can or cannot use the mRNA vaccine . This is particularly relevant if we try to get the vaccine produced for low and middle income countries at a very, very low price.

And so, after many attempts at resolving the issue we were very surprised that Moderna unilaterally went out and filed the patent and specifically and explicitly excluded John, Barney, and Kizzy. The entire academic community, when they found out about this, was totally taken aback. And so, just this week Francis made it clear in an interview with Reuters that we are going to bring Moderna to court and let the courts determined the outcome

My Note: NIH dropped the suit in 2023

Nov 26, 2021

Not sure about the evasion of vaccines, but the situation is certainly heating up. Will discuss whether or not we’re going to restrict travel from South Africa later today at a 12 noon call with Jeff.

Email from Cyrus Shahpar on 11/26/2021:

NGS-SA

Summary

• Epidemiological data suggest sustained increase in COVID-19 incidence across
  Gauteng, possibly fueled by cluster outbreaks

• New variant (B.1.1.529) detected in multiple samples from across Gauteng

• Public and private testing labs in Gauteng have noticed a significant and rapid increase in detection of variant (based on PCR proxy), and now increasing in other provinces

• Mutation profile predicted to give significant immune evasion and enhanced transmissibility - urgent work already started to understand full significance

• We can make some predictions about the impact of mutations in this variant, but full significance uncertain and the vaccines remain the critical issue

Nov. 27, 2021 - GLOBAL USA

Conversation with Jerome (Jay) Powell, Chair of the US Federal Reserve. Bob Grady texted me this morning to connect me with Jay Powell who wanted to talk to me about the implications of the new variant on the economy since he was in the process with the Federal Reserve of making trillions of dollars in loans to other countries. He wanted to hear from me first-hand about what my projections for the outbreak would be. He will be testifying before Congress this coming week and we agreed that I would keep him posted as to any additional information that comes out. I briefed him thoroughly and what we know up to this point.

Nov. 28, 2021 (Sunday) Global USA

Very Important Day!! - An extraordinary amount has been going on over the last 24 to 48 hours. It is very clear that with the Omicorn variant is rapidly spreading from the epicenter in South Africa with mostly travel-related cases to a number of countries at this point including Botswana, the Netherlands, England, Hong Kong, Australia, Italy, Israel, Belgium, Czech Republic, and several other countries. This is unquestionably a highly transmissible virus. We had a very productive zoom call at 12 noon Washington DC time with our South African colleagues once again. The main players among the South Africans were Tulio de Oliveira, Glenda Gray, and Carolyn Williamson. The have been extraordinarily transparent and helpfu giving us data in real time. It is a shame that we had to block travel from RSA. However, we would have gotten killed by the press if we did not as we are now getting killed for having done it. I expressed my deep gratitude to them for their help.

The South Africans gave us a really good feel about the fact that there are things that we know and things that we don’t know at this point. The combination of the many mutations in the spike protein together with the fact that they are seeing spikes in infection among people who have recovered from delta as well as those who have been vaccinated. The critical question is how severe is this disease that likely will result from this new infection.

Incredibly busy Thanksgiving Day. We had zoom calls with the Pfizer group led by Mikael Dolsten to scope out what their plan is regarding scaling up boosters against prototype as well as the advisability or not of developing Omicron-specific boosters. Also met with the Moderna people for similar discussions.

Clearly, the virus is spreading widely with five cases in Israel all of which were picked up by screening at the airport. E-mail from Danny Douek:

My Note: Huge 6 month gap in Fauci diary conveniently missing the huge death toll from Omicron despite its lower IFR

August 13, 2022

More drama with regard to the CDC and Rochelle Walenski. After much going back and forth between the CDC and the other docs including me, Vivek, Steve Cha, and to some extent David Kessler, we thought we had gotten them pulled back from making the statement that the vaccines were not effective at all in preventing infection and transmission. The reason this is an issue is that if they came out with that statement, which in fact is not entirely true since there is some degree of modest but declining protection as you would expect, then this would conflict with the statement and effort of recommending that people get the updated bivalent BA.5 vaccine in September. In addition, it would undermine the DoJ’s efforts at mandates for vaccines under certain circumstances. In any event, the CDC agreed to pull back on the statement of absolute lack of efficacy of vaccines against infections and transmission and take a more measured approach of saying that the vaccines provides only modest and waning efficacy against infection and transmission and that is why we should heed the advice of getting the updated booster in Sept. However, although they did this on their website, the MMWR that cam out yesterday had the same original damning language.

Sept. 11, 2022

The New York Post continues to lie and distort. This is abut the conspiracy theory that Mark Zuckerberg and I were colluding to suppress free speech:

Fauci’s direct line to Zuck proves Facebook COVID censorship was all about power, not public health

Sep 15,2022

The Lancet report on COVID by a panel chaired by Jeffrey Sachs has recently come out and inappropriately equated the possibility of a lab leak with that of a natural occurrence of the virus. There has been an uproar among the biology community against Jeff who apparently removed from the panel anyone who felt strongly about the natural occurrence and actually went on a podcast with Robert F Kennedy, Jr talking about how the lab leak was likely the cause even though there is absolutely no evidence to indicate this.

Prominent virologists including Angela Rasmussen and Peter Hotez have come out very strongly condemning Jeff saying that he should have been removed as chair on the basis of his strong prejudice and certainly on the basis of his allying himself with Robert F Kennedy junior. This is another example I believe of Richard Horton the editor of Lancet trying to get involved in controversial issues which bring attention to his journal. This is not the first time he has done this:

Sept. 16, 2022

I have always thought that Bob redfield was somewhat of a bizarre personality and his history dating back to his time at Walter Reed has proven that. But I didn’t think that he was as crazy as he is now manifested by an interview he gave with a totally weird person Paul Thacker in which he condemned Francis Collins and me I think we’re the first ones beginning this award for misleading the American public and for lying to the American public and even accusing me of lying under oath at a congressional hearing. It is truly unfortunate that as a former CDC director he has stooped so low as to get into the conspiracy theory space:

Oct. 17, 2022

Crazy thing has now emerged. Boston University investigators have done an experiment that clearly would have fallen under the category of oversight by the PCO process. Yet they never told our NIAID program people about it, nor was there any mention of these experiments in the grant that they cited in the pre print paper, nor was there any mention of this in the progress reports from the grant. What they did was swap an omicron spike on to a Wuhan matrix to determine the effect of the chimera on the function of the virus. As you might expect the people who have been attacking us for gain-of-function research are jumping all over this.

We are putting out a statement indicating that we knew nothing of these experiments and they should have told us about them and put it through the PCO process. Let us see how this plays

Oct. 19, 2022

BU admits that they did the experiments on their own and did not use NIAID funds. Stll ongoing discussion whether this was actually GOF since fewer mice died. In any event, we are clear of this.

Nov. 23, 2022

I had my 7 hour (on the clock) deposition by lawyers for the Missouri Vs Biden plaintiffs. It showed up as spectators as the plaintiff’s lawyer John Sauer questioned me for seven hours. I had been well prepared for the previous few days by the DoJ lawyers including Adam Kirschner and Josh Gardner as well as Amanda Chuzi Anant Humar, Brian Netter and HHS council Chris Hammond.

Although this was supposed to be on the topic of the Biden administration including me interfering with free speech by influencing the social media platforms to not allow opinions differing from our own to be put on social media, very many of the questions were directed at things unrelated to that including the origins of COVID, the Wuhan grant, Peter Daszak, my position on masking, and a variety of other issues that the Congress has been concerned about.

I must say I did extraordinarily well and the DOJ lawyers said that that was one of the best performances and the deposition that they have ever seen.

Dec. 17, 2022

It is clear (I have not been reporting it every day) that the far, extreme right and Qanon literally hate me and De Santis is starting to play into this with his growin campaign for presidency. From the New York Times: Although “vaccine paranoia and Fauci hatred are still niche positions in the electorate at large,” if anyone “imagines that replacing Trump with DeSantis as the G.O.P.’s leader would signal a party on its way to becoming sane again is in for a rude shock.”

End-Fauci is Retired

Ps-This is from January 2022. First substack post related to COVID. I learned much more since but still might be worth a read