FAUCI DIARY ARCHIVE — Saturday, July 23, 2022
https://faucisdiary.com/diary/2022-07-23

Text below is verbatim from the released PDFs, with the original line breaks.
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DIARY ENTRY — Saturday, July 23, 2022
Source: Tony's Diary Package, pp. 985–988 of 2026.07.24_Tonys-Diary-Package.pdf
Words: 941
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Yesterday I spoke with dawn O'Connell and told her that I would be very much in favor of
the secretary declaring a public health emergency for monkeypox. She is now running it up
the chain to see what others think about that..
I had my usual call this morning with Kevin O'Connor, the president's physician. It was a
disturbing call because Kevin told me that Ashish is really trying to manipulate what Kevin
says regarding the health of the president and Kevin is starting to get very aggravated by
this. For example, Ashish did not want Kevin to mention that the president's temperature
was 99.4F because then that would be a topic for the news discussion. That is completely
ridiculous because it is totally expected that someone with a URI would have a mild
temperature responsive to Tylenol. In addition, Ashish did not like the use of the word
“malaise” which was the exact word the president used to describe how he felt. Ashish was
afraid that that word would bring up recall of president Jimmy Carter and the negative
response that the country had to his describing “malaise” in the country. And then finally
in today's report Kevin wanted to put in a new symptom that the president complained of
which was muscle aches, an entirely understandable symptom that has nothing to do with
progression of disease. They insisted that he not add that. Kevin pushed back and said that
he would not sign off on anything if they force him to hold back on what the true symptoms
are.

Call from Larry Horowitz regarding Ron Klain saying to him (Larry) that the President
wants to make some changes since Health area (COVID/MPX) is not going well.
“Someone needs to get fired.” Primary target is Becerra, but they feel that they cannot
fire him since they never would get a replacement confirmed in he Senate. Next in line in
Rochelle. They really are disappointed with Rochelle and want to fire her. They asked
Larry for suggestions for replacements. Larry called me about this. He suggests Mark
McLellan or Anne Schuchat. Wants names from me. Larry also called Jeff Z. They do
not know that Jeff is working with me regarding my stepping down. Could get
complicated. I called Jeff and we discussed the situation. See below my discussion the
next day (Sunday) with Jeff.
Had a long conversation with Jeff about the above issue concerning firing someone at
HHS/CDC. Similar to the situation that I faced years ago with Secretary Burwell wanting
to fire Tom Frieden because of poor performance with Ebola where I defended Tom, I
found myself defending Rochelle. Rochelle is a wonderful person, but she does not have
control over her agency and she has to learn to balance the politically expedient thing while

still maintaining solid scientific principles. The problem is she relies too heavily on the
entrenched people at CDC who are smart and will meaning but who have no oversight or
quality control from the outside. This allows them to proceed with somewhat antiquated if
not ossified ideas. As the discussion went the options were to fire Secretary Becerra;
however, this would be very difficult since it would be tough to get a Senate confirmation
for a secretary within a relatively acceptable period of time. The other option is to fire
Rochelle, but now is not the time to do that and it would be against my recommendation.
One of the points that Jeff made is that they are considering in a humane way to ask
Rochelle to step down at the end of the year before the beginning of the second-half of the
first term. Despite my trying to protect Rochelle there is a very good chance that that will
happen.
Kevin O’Connor continues to call me 2x/day. The president continues to improve and is
completed his 4th day on Paxlovid. .He was out for four hours today by the pool doing
reading work. The next big question is whether to give him eight days or 10 days instead of
five days of pax livid. That would be a problem since it would be against FDA
authorization and the public would cry out that we had treating him differently than other
people. the concern on the part of the White House is that if he rebounds after he is
negative for several days, he will likely be out talking and mingling with people. If he
infects someone following an inadvertent rebound, he will be blamed for infecting other
people. My suggestion would be to treat him for five days have him stay in the White House
virtually for an additional five days testing him everyday if he turns negative as soon as he
turns negative send him out even if it's before the 10 day. And have him wear a mask in
order to avoid him inadvertently infecting people if he rebounds, I would just test him
every morning before he gets up and goes out to meet with people. If he is negative he will
be OK, if he is positive continued isolating.
Emergency phone call among HHS people (Becerra, Dawn et al) regarding convincing
POTUS (and Ron) to declare a Public Health Emergency (PHE) for MPX. Becerra says
that POTUS will rely heavily on my opinion. Problem is that they are concerned that if you
declare a PHE for monkey pox then why not declare it for gun violence or for reproductive
rights. That sounds very much like the negativistic attitude of RON.

PRESS: ABC “Good Morning America” Weekend; CBS Mornings (Weekend); CNN “New
Day” Weekend; Fox News with Neil Cavuto