Wednesday, August 3, 2022

Spoke with Kevin O’Connor. POTUS stable, but still Ag positive. ------------------------ Monkeypox spreading globally: My comment in NY Times article by Sheryl Stolberg: “Centering the response operation at the White House gives the administration more flexibility to coordinate efforts across a range of agencies that might be involved, including FEMA, the Health and Human Services Department and the Department of Homeland Security. It also creates a designated team that has no responsibilities other than to combat monkeypox — a move that makes sense”, said Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, Mr. Biden’s chief medical adviser. NY Times keeps hammering HHS for slow response in getting vaccines out to the community for monkeypox. Article by By Sharon LaFraniere, Noah Weiland and Joseph Goldstein: NYT: “U.S. Could Have Had Many More Doses of Monkeypox Vaccine This Year” I met with Rino Rappuoli in my office today. They are planning to make him the chief scientific officer of a pandemic preparedness program by the Italian government in Sienna. Rino wants me, either before or after I leave the NIH to help them in an official way to set-up their program. I gave an interview with Nate Silver about a book that he's writing about risks in society. Rand Paul together with Roger Marshal, Rick Scott, Josh Hawley, Ron Johnson is holding a “hearing” on origins with the witnesses: Richard Ebright (Lab Director Waksman Lab. Of Microbiology, Rutgers), Kevin Esvelt, (Assistant Professor of Media Arts and Sciences MIT Media Lab) and Steven Quay (CEO, Atossa Theapeutics) all totally non-credible. Angel Rasmussen is blasting them on twitter as hacks. Once per year the minority are allowed to call a hearing and so Paul et al are using this as a publicity stunt. The majority has not even showed up. It is a total farse. I got a follow-up from Chase Crawford from my legislative staff who listened to the hearing and the result was expected in which Ebright came out strong saying that we did do gain of function and that I lied Quay also said that. However Esvelt said that some may call this gain of function whereas other scientists would say it's not since gain of function is such an ill defined term. He came the closest to reality. The rest of them would just pounding away that NIH funded gain of function and it likely caused the outbreak and that I lied saying that we did not. COVID: