Saturday, January 16, 2021

Global – 92,300,000/2,000,000; USA – 23,400,000/391,000 Jeff Zients gave me the entire Biden plan to look at and approve - I mentioned to him in detail the recent data from David Ho. We will set up a call for Sunday with the Biden team (doctors) since now several teams such as Michel Nussenzweig, Jess Bloom and others are finding the same thing as Ho. I want the call on Sunday since Michel is publishing his data in BioRx on Monday. I will bring John Mascola on the call with me to describe with some slides. Also, I have pushed with JZ to get Ned Sharpless re-appointed as NCI Director otherwise his resignation letter will go into effect on January 20. I asked JZ to get in touch with Ron Klain and re-appoint hi. JZ called me back this evening and said he spoke to Ron and Ned will stay as NCI Director. Post-holiday surge seems to be stabilizing. See Deb’s comment below: 1. For the first time in weeks all indicators except fatalities are flat or declining. This suggests with full data triangulation that we have reached in most of the country the post Holiday peak and declines should continue to follow with continued mitigation. Testing rates have resumed to pre Holiday levels as for the first time week over week cases have declined (SLIDE 4) from last week's high – but testing for asymptomatic cases must increase to sustain the gains. Finding the containing the silent spread will be key to holding the current gains 2. CA is stabilizing at a high plateau and if AZ, FL, TX, NY can hold at their current plateau or early declines we could see National improvement beginning next week and improvement in fatality rates in 30 days but not without reaching 450K in 4 weeks and 500K fatalities over the next 8 weeks based on current case load and rate of rises 3. Most of the rapidly rising metros appear to be reaching peak or at a high plateau and some like Chicago and NYC are beginning to decline. The key will be continued aggressive mitigation 4. New COVID hospital admissions are stable at a high plateau nationally but if the larger states and metros can hold or improve the rates should steadily decline if we can keep everyone focused on vigilance as we vaccinate PLEASE SEE SLIDE 3 SHOWING ICU BED OCCUPACY – SHOWING CLEARLY THE PRIMARY CURRENT STATES WITH THE WINTER SURGE PRESS: