FAUCI DIARY ARCHIVE — Sunday, July 24, 2022
https://faucisdiary.com/diary/2022-07-24

Text below is verbatim from the released PDFs, with the original line breaks.
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DIARY ENTRY — Sunday, July 24, 2022
Source: Tony's Diary Package, pp. 988–990 of 2026.07.24_Tonys-Diary-Package.pdf
Words: 1085
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Kevin O’Connor continues to call me 2x/day. The President continues to improve and is
completed his 4th day (Sunday) 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 Paxlovid. 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 unrecognized 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 up to 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 period. And have him
wear a mask in order to avoid him inadvertently infecting people if he rebounds, I would
be OK, if he is positive continued isolating.
Had long conversation with Ashish who was asking my advice. He started off the
conversation by saying that the White House continues to have a lot of problems with
Rochelle, the latest of which was the apportionment of vaccine doses. (See discussion
above about strong consideration of asking her to step down). Ashish said that Ron wants
my take on the situation with Rochelle/CDC and the distribution of vaccine doses. She
wants to divide the vaccines for monkey pox according to the formula of 25% according to
cases and 75% according to risk. This is something that we had discussed yesterday in a
call with the secretary. During that call I promised that I would back Rochelle's proposal
because of the fact that if they do not distribute more, namely 75%, according to risk, when
we have outbreaks related to “Southern Decadence” and other gay pride functions we will
not have vaccine in place to counter it. However Ron Klain is adamant that he does not
want vaccines shipped to locations in which there are few cases and when they do not get
cases or they do not administer vaccine to their case countthat the vaccine goes to waste
(you cannot reship vaccine). I made the following point to the secretary yesterday and I
repeated it word for word to Ron today. I would be supportive of a 25% for cases and 75%
for risk distribution only if the jurisdictions that received the 75% for risk are given the
vaccines in small apportionments. For example if they were scheduled to get 400 vaccines,
you would give them 100 and tell them that if they don't use that 100 expeditiously the next
shipment of 100 would not be given to them but would be given to a jurisdiction that has a
high number of cases. I explained this to Ron when he called me today and told him that
that would be my position. He said that Ron is very interested in what I would do and that
this would hold a great deal of weight in the discussions that we will have tomorrow, which
is Monday.
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 every day 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.
Of note, Ashish states that he wants Kevin to go up in front of the cameras to describe the
President's condition, but it is Ron who does not want him to go up as well as Karine Jean-
Pierre. That is interesting because I am hearing that it is Ron who does not want Kevin to
get up in front of a camera.
PRESS: MSNBC with Jonathan Capehart