FAUCI DIARY ARCHIVE — Friday, February 12, 2010
https://faucisdiary.com/diary/2010-02-12

Text below is verbatim from the released PDFs, with the original line breaks.
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DIARY ENTRY — Friday, February 12, 2010
Source: Diary Prequel, p. 229 of 2026.07.27_Diary-Prequel-.pdf
Words: 430
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Meet with the POTUS from 2:00 to 3:00 in the Situation Room. Richard
and Heidi present and the HHS team answered questions. I was not shy in telling the
PTUS what I thought. He said “Are we making this more complicated than it should we?
Why not contract out for the relatively limited number of countermeasures that we have
Intel. On that could be threats”. I reminded him that in his SOTU address he said that we
would develop an initiative to counter all threats to public health even naturally emerging
infections. I then told him that the dual use and new platform technologies were essential
to get industry involved since they would not take the investment risk unless we helped
them with the technology, etc. He agreed. He recognized who I was without even an
introduction and called me “Tony”. All in all, the meeting went well and he said that he
endorsed the plan. Parenthetically, The traffic was horrible getting to the WH via the
GW parkway by Taxi. I took a taxi because the METRO Red Line shut down due to a
derailment. Stressful getting there, but great to have 1 hour face time with the POTUS.
This is now the 5th POTUS that I have personally advised via serious face-time.

Feb. 15-17, 2010 – Went to annual CROI meeting in San Francisco. Gave Opening
Session Plenary on “The HIV/AIDS Research Agenda: A View from NIAID”. Gave a
bold and provocative talk about the high risk, high impact, potential “game-changer”
research that we plan to do over the next few years. The 3 “pillars” of this research are 1)
Aggressively seek, test and treat infected individuals. However, the math tells us that the
treatment paradigm in a vacuum will never end the AIDS pandemic since more people
get infected than get put on treatment. Hence we need to do something different such as
getting people who are on therapy off therapy by developing a 2) CURE for HIV – tough
challenge. Also we need to 3) Prevent new infections by a) ARVs as prevention – ARV
containing microbicides; PrEP; test and treat; and b) vaccine. Beautiful days in SF.
Stayed at the Westin St. Francis. Many people said that it was the best and most
inspiring talk that I have ever given – “bold and challenging”.

On Feb. 17, I briefed by teleconference the PCAST working group about the POTUS
initiative and gave them background info. On the call were co-chairs Harold Varmus and
Eric Lander. Also, David Baltimore, Ed Penhoelt, Emilio Emini, Harvey Fineberg,
among others.

EMAIL — RE: Draft Strategy
From: Francis Collins
To: Anthony Fauci
Sent: Fri, 12 Feb 2010 07:15:40 -0500
Source: Reading Room, p. 479 of Reading-Room-FINAL.pdf
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Thanks, Tony, please keep me posted.
FC

From: Fauci, Anthony (NIH/NIAID) [E]
Sent: Thursday, February 11, 2010 9:17 PM
To: Collins, Francis (NIH/OD) [E]
Subject: FW: Draft Strategy

Francis:
  As per our conversation yesterday, here is the document that we have been working on for several weeks with multiple
revisions. You will see my final edits that I put into the document today. As mentioned to you over the phone, the
exercise morphed over weeks from a consideration of how we can improve the process of the development of
countermeasures against emerging infections and bioterror threats to a new “bold” strategy. This process has been
driven by Heidi Avery, Deputy to John Brennan, in the Homeland Security component of the new National Security
Council. The decision was made final this afternoon that we will meet with the POTUS tomorrow at 2:00 PM to present
the draft strategy. Heidi Avery will present the strategy and I will be present as a subject matter expert to be available to
answer questions on the scientific aspects if necessary. I will let you know how it went.
Best regards,
Tony