Friday, July 23, 2021

I had a very productive conversation in my regular every two week call with our UK colleagues – Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance, this time accompanied by Thomas Waite. I explained to them the situation that we have here in the United states with the delta variant. The UK seems to be a couple of weeks ahead of us in every way. They have vaccinated a slightly larger proportion of their population than we have and the surge in delta that they are experiencing is much steeper then what we have at this time. The efficacy of the vaccine against hospitalization and death continues to hold. They are a skeptical about the Israeli vaccine efficacy data for asymptomatic and mildly symptomatic disease as we are here in the United States. The UK has made the decision similar to us that they will try to get all the children back to school in person by the fall. However unlike us, the unvaccinated children will not be required to wear masks when they go back to school. They have essentially decided that since you cannot vaccinate the younger children yet and since they generally have very mild disease, that you should accept the fact that sooner or later these young children are going to get infected and so be it. They do not want to close the schools or go to virtual learning. I will continue to follow the situation with them since it is very helpful to us here to learn what the UK is doing. Of note, both Chris and Patrick wanted me to know that I am held in extremely high regard in the UK by virtually everyone on the basis of my standing up to Rand Paul and his nonsense in the Senate Right-wing attacks on me intensify – North Carolina GOP Congressman Madison Cawthorn - "I thank Rand Paul for bringing it up and I will tell you right now Anthony Fauci does not have the best interests of the American people at his heart," he said. "I believe he is a pawn for the Chinese government by giving them funding to do militaristic funding to try and figure out how they can make an animal virus more transmissible to humans. It's disgusting, it's wrong, and 4 million people are dead all around the world because of it." Did my usual weekly briefing of the Cabinet (“Principals”) together with Rochelle, Natalie, Jeff, and Vivek. Brought them up to date on Delta variant becoming dominant. PRESS: CBC (Canadian) “Power and Politics; FOX with Neil Caputo; PRESS: Very good article in the LA Times by Melissa Healy: LA Times: Fauci: ‘There’s no way’ the coronavirus was made with U.S. research funds. Here’s why https://lat.ms/3ruPOC6