FAUCI DIARY ARCHIVE — Wednesday, May 24, 2006
https://faucisdiary.com/diary/2006-05-24

Text below is verbatim from the released PDFs, with the original line breaks.
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DIARY ENTRY — Wednesday, May 24, 2006
Source: Diary Prequel, pp. 142–143 of 2026.07.27_Diary-Prequel-.pdf
Words: 201
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Have had continual trickling in of cases of human infections with H5N1
with most recent count of 218 cases and 124 deaths. Fifty countries now have birds

infected and 10 have birds and humans infected. Of note that about 1-2 weeks ago it
became apparent that there was a family cluster of 7 cases in Sumatra, Indonesia. Recent
evidence strongly indicates that this was human-to-human spread similar to the small
cluster in Thailand in 2004 where 11 year old girl infected her mother and aunt who
nursed her in the hospital before she died. Similar situation in Sumatra where father
nursed 10 year son and others in family slept in small room while one or 2 people were
coughing all night. Bottom line was a media blitz. I was asked by HHS and White
House to go to “Pebble Beach” on the White House grounds and do wall-to-wall
interviews to allay fears. Fact is that the cluster looks like it is dead-ending. I did
interviews with NBC Evening News, CBS Evening News ABC World News tonight,
Nightline, CNN Wolf Blitzer Situation Room, WTOP radio, MSNBC TV, etc. Big time
exposure. HHS was very pleased with how I handled this volatile situation.