Friday, January 15, 2021

Global – 91,500,000/2,000,000; USA – 23,200,000/387,300 Had Zoom briefing of Biden and Harris to prep them for the speech that Biden will give at 3:45 PM on the vaccine rollout plan. We briefed him at 2:30 to 3:30 and he and Harris (only he spoke) gave briefing to the Nation. Biden announced today that he has asked Francis Collins to stay on. I had some influence on this. Eric Lander will be head of OSTP. Considerable concern about the new mutants in UK, Brazil and especially South Africa – David Ho is studying this carefully and finds that the UK variant results in a 2-fold decrease in ability of vaccine-induced antibodies to neutralize. For the South African variant it is 4 to 5-fold decrease. Had Zoom with David and John Mascola and others and David went over the Mutant data. Bottom line is that against the UK mutant the vaccine (Moderna)-induced sera is weakened by 2-fold; however, against the RSA (and by extrapolation although did not look the Brazilian) mutant the sera are diminished by 5-fold) MAJOR IMPLICATIONs for vaccine development and for policy such as letting people into the country PRESS: Ebro in the Morning Radio Show in NYC; Today Show NBC TV with Craig Melvin; CTV - Canadian TV – Sunday Show (Ian Wood); WUSA TV Jan Jeffcoat;