Tuesday, July 26, 2022

Continuing my twice per day discussion with Kevin O'Connor regarding the president's condition. The POTUS Is doing very well and improving substantially each day. Today is one day following the termination of his Paxlovid therapy and his CT level is 35 which means that he has very little replication competent virus in his nasopharynx. He feels very well and we had a long discussion this evening with Kevin, Ashish Jha, and Ron Klain as to what the presidents activities could be looking forward. He tested negative today by antigen test and has a very nice CT level as mentioned above. The White House staff is concerned about possible rebound and I made a suggestion that he stay masked and in isolation until he gets two negative antigen tests in a row. After that he can go out and do duties on the outside provided that he does not travel and that he wears a mask. I would test him intimately a few times a week to see if he rebounds. It became clear to me that Ron Klain and the president rely heavily upon my advice but what to do with the president's condition. I have developed a very good relationship with Kevin O'Connor and he calls me twice a day. We had some serious discussions with secretary Becerra about having a consistent message about the distribution of the monkey pox vaccine. See above about the concern of having vaccine in places that are not being utilized well there are lines in other jurisdictions. I supported the CDC recommendation of distributing the vaccine with 75% to risk areas and 25% to actual cases so long as individual jurisdictions utilize the vaccine. The CDC will send out the vaccine in tranches that will not be followed up with more vaccine until the jurisdiction actually utilizes the vaccine so that we don't have unused doses in one area and demands more than supply in another area. We also discussed whether or not we should declare monkeypox a public health emergency. I argued strongly that we do that in order to send a signal to the MSM community that we are very serious about the situation that they find themselves under. We had the vaccine summit today in the Indian treaty room of the executive office building. I gave a talk on the NIH research agenda. Also I did an enormous amount of press today which overlapped with a number of meetings with the White House as well as with secretary becerra. Big time stressed today and I feel it. PRESS: CNN “New Day” with John Berman; MSNBC “Morning Joe”; NPR “All things Considered”; News Nation Now TV; MSNBC “The Reid Out” with Jason Johnson