Thursday, May 6, 2021

Global – 154,800,000/3,200,000; USA – 32,400,000/576,200 I had an important conversation this morning with Rochelle Walensky who wanted my input on putting together some specific metrics for when the country can open up and stop wearing masks. I have been encouraging her to do this over the past several weeks since many members of the press and the public have been pushing us to give some sort of a metric regarding the number of cases as well as the percent of the population that is vaccinated that can be used to allow states, cities, towns, and counties to know when they can open up and stop wearing masks. She showed me a bunch of slides which proposed a color-coded system County by County that would provide some form of metrics. She proposed that if a County gets to less than 50 cases per 100,000 population over seven days and has 70% of its population receiving at least one dose of the vaccine that this could be the metric for opening. I am very pleased to see that they are moving in this direction since this is what I have been encouraging them to do now for several weeks. I believe it would counter the intense criticism that the CDC and I are receiving because of a lack of definitive metrics. I had a terrific experience today, which is Nurse’s Week. A couple of nurses from the different wards had written emails to me asking me to drop by and say hello to nurses on the occasion of Nurse’s Week; they felt that the nurses would really appreciate seeing me and being able to take pictures with me. And so, today with the help of the head of nursing at the NIH Gwen Wallen and the various Ward supervisors, I visited every nursing unit in the NIH Clinical Center to congratulate and thank each of the nurses on Nurse’s Week and to take literally hundreds of photos both as groups and as individual selfies. The nurses went absolutely wild to see me they were squealing and laughing and clapping. It was something to behold. The hour and a half that I invested in doing that was well worth the time in that it had to have been an extraordinary morale builder for the nurses. • I did a bunch of ceremonial social things virtually at Vanderbilt University where I taped my commencement address today to be given as a taped version next week. The Vanderbilt community was very excited to help me with them even though it was virtual PRESS: Interview with Joel Achenbach of the Washington Post; CNN Interview from India;

Global USA Daily cases at 44,000 Incidence and vaccine coverage • US (13/100K) 1st dose 45%| 2nd 33% • UK (2/100K) 1st dose 52%| 2nd 24% • Israel (0.7/100K) 1st dose 58%| 2nd 54% The issue of the escape of the virus from the Wuhan Chinese lab is starting to heat up again. The usual cast of characters that had been bugging us about gain of function research or add it again claiming incorrectly that we have funded gain of function research for the Wuhan lab. Somehow or other they're trying to connect funding gain of function with a Chinese investigator getting infected with the spread of COVID-19 throughout the world. They seem to be hung up on the fact that they believe that we have funded gain of function research for the lab when in fact we have not. Nonetheless, they will certainly be up to mischievous behavior. In this regard Francis Collins has received an 11-page letter from right wing Republican Congress person Cathy McMorris Rodgers, cosine by congressman Brett Guthrie Ann Morgan Griffith. They have 29 questions concerning the conspiracy theory that the virus originated from the Wuhan lab. See attachment below. In addition, on March 5th I received a letter from congressman Mike Gallagher (see attachment below) with similar questions about gain of function research and the possibility of an escape of the virus from the Wuhan lab. It is inevitable that they will be hassling me about this for some time. SKM_C754e2105071 SKM_C754e2105071 2531.pdf 2540.pdf • Nancy Messonnier resigns (see above) PRESS: White House press conference; Times Now Indian TV;