One thing i learned, the cdc director, not in the opinion business, the data and science. When does the date and science exists . Based on enrollment with pfizer and moderna it is conceptual that they will have enough data to present it to the fda for evaluation before october toward the end of november. The reason they cant be more specific is these trials are event driven trials, they are 100 dependent on how much covid19 occurs in the volunteer population. A lot of the individuals, a total number of events the potential for them to have enough events, the vaccine will be in the october time frame, the vaccine is 50 it might be in the late november timeframe. If there are fewer events and a good vaccine, might be in the November December timeframe. Somewhere between the end of october and end of the year it is probable one or more of these vaccines will be presented to the fda for review, emergency authorization or potentially. By that time was would be the time range when we start seeing vaccinations being deployed . Because project warp speed is not taking shortcuts on safety or scientific integrity as we sit here today those vaccines from modernand fisa and astrazeneca are made are used, distributed if the fda can determine they are safe and efficacious. Normally would have to wait for the fda to review the data, they would say the Pharmaceutical Company would figure out how to manufacture it. This vaccine is going to be available it is either going to be a bunch of souvenirs at the vaccine does not show to be safe or efficacious. To save that time and it is important time particularly for those of us who have comorbidity over the age of 65, the sooner we can have a preventive vaccine for covid, it will translate to saving human life. It will translate to saving human life so that was an acceleration to make sure there wasnt an administrative delay justin because of the Financial Dynamics of how we develop vaccines. Thats whats really remarkable about operation warp speed. Its not that were taking a safety shortcut like i just said with the astrophysical trial going on hold is a good example. Not that were taking scientific principle shortcuts. We are taking a financial one. When you asked me when to think the vaccine will be available broadly to the American Public, if everything goes really well, that will be sometime in the first, Second Quarter of 2021. For those for those high risk prioritized individuals, its conceptual that the vaccine could be available in the late fall or early winter of this year. Whats so important about vaccines is Public Acceptance so that people get vaccinated. We have got a Disinformation Campaign that while was befored was drink up antivaxxers concerns. There have been surveys with respect to covid vexing the show significant hesitancy to get one. The politics of this election cycle have raised concerns that operation warp speed could be a russian elite among some we know thats out there. The president has said the vaccine could be available before election day. Some say the cdc has been subject to political pressures. With all of these headwinds, and that is being polite to call them headwinds, how do you convince a skeptical and divided public eye vaccine when it comes out is safe . This is really important. One of the goals ive had as cdc director is to move away from what we call Vaccine Hesitancy to a culture in our nation where vaccination with confidence. When we find the less 52 of the American Public takes the flu vaccine, and i tell you in the last decade, 360,000 people died of flu and we have vaccine, then how do we begin to get the American Public to embrace vaccine . What is one of the most important contributions of science, the modern medicine, thats vaccination. And so many people still leave that on the shelf for themselves, their family, their community. We are trying to build that advocacy. Long journey. Lets take noncovid vaccines. A lot of parents, the reason they are hesitant to vaccinate, is they just dont want to make a mistake for their children. I have six children, and so it is going to take time for the Healthcare Professionals to sit down and have a dialogue about this. Maybe several times before parents embrace vaccines. Doctors will ask you come you want to get a vaccine . You say no and thats the end of the story. Im asking the nurses, and doctors to reengage in that discussion. Some are misinformed. When someone is misinformed you cant just say your misinformed, you dont know which are talking about. You have to engage them and a dialogue and get them to understand so they can come to their owney conclusion that thee misinformed. This vaccine is really a serious issue. Im very concerned about it now particularly with the covid vaccine. Its not something that should be politicized. So have you said to the president of the united states, please dont politicize this . Please dont use this in your speeches or to the other candidates for that matter, that you got it everybody around the vaccine and this cannot be an issues of politics . Again, my comments with the president i keep to myself and the president what i will say publicly here what i just said. This cannot be politicized. By either party or any individual. Hasnt he done that . Once you instill fear in somebody, its very hard to remove that. So i have a challenge right now that im working on which is called disparity of vaccination. Lets just take the flu vaccine for example. Only 28 in 201718 of hispanic and latino americans tooksp the flu vaccine. Im glad we got up into the high 30s but that is still only the high 30s. The africanamerican community, we went from about 41 to 47, 48 . I dont need to reinforce hesitancy. So on either side, again not taking sides, either side politicizes of this, again, is against the goal for what im trying to accomplish which is to get American Culture to be of a point of view to vaccinate with confidence. We have some schools in this country where less than 30 of the kids are vaccinated against measles . Thats whatss on the big measls outbreak of two years ago. This is really important and the added concern when people do view that this vaccine is being rushed, that may impact safety, im trying again to tell you that i know from cdcs point of view, i can say from the nih point if you come i get it from the fdas point of view that the only thing this would indicate this process is data insight and we would like to have us be able to continue to do that. Obviously the pharmaceutical compass have also made a recent commitment that they are in line with that whole concept. We should celebrate when we have a successful, safe and efficacious covid virus sexting. I didnt think we would have went for a couple of years. I thought the rest of my cdc career was going to be kneedeep in the war against covid. Now i can see if we can get at efficacious vaccine or two or three that between now and next summer we can get this behind us. Those are important words. Behindnd us, i think we will tae you, take your science and medicine i hope at its word. Before we get to nexium we have to get through this fall and winter. I want to ask you about the fall winter seasonal flu and how that collides with covid19. Whats your assessment of the common flu season and what that means given the pandemic . Frank, i made a couple of new cycles back in april when i commented that i thought that the october, november, december could be the worst Public Health all this nation has ever had. The reality is, it could have been. Im hopeful its not going to be. Be because with the confluence of flu and covid with almost in a bad flu season there some Hospital Systems that are of little. We saw what happened in the northeast. It overwhelmed the hospitals, and chicago, detroit and los angeles and down in new orleans. Im going to tell its interesting what we are seeing. Flu actually transmits all year round. We. Actually peak in the late fall winter. Thats a legal flu season but the truth is lewis transmitted in this country all year round. We have now the lowest Spring Summer transmission of flu that we have ever seen. Why is that . You know what . Blocks flu transmission . Masks, social distancing, handwashing, okay . Being smart about crowds. So the same things that we are now doing for covid, and are called extents out in australia andd other sensing the mildest flu season ever. I do believe that if the American Public does five things for me, wear a mask when they cant social distance, social distance, vigilant about hand hygiene, smart about crowds, you know, indoors worse than outdoors. Outdoor things, do that more than indoor. Indoor, stay away from crowds. And the last thing i want them to do, the fifth thing covers get vaccinated against flu. We do those five things and theres a good chance, what i appealed to individuals who havent had a vaccine for flu before is, wonder one of the te flu vaccine does well, and may not prevent infection but it doesnt modify illness. If you and i can get our flu vaccine so if and when we do get flu we dont end up in the hospital, taking the bad from what that 72yearold 72yearh covid needs, so the doctors and nurses are not overwhelmed come then were doing our part. Let me tell a story. I was talking Somebody Just the other day with just to a just flew across the country and had to stop over in atlanta and walks through hartsfield airport in atlanta, and told me that it was crowded and that there were people not Wearing Masks or people wearing their masks over their mouth but not over their noses so not properly, and he was very concerned about that. How concerned shouldd we be that covid fatigue or just asserting your freedom or whatever you want to call it is going to make those five things even after all this insistence that you and others have had on this point, harder to do as a go into the flu season . I think you hit a big issue. I wasnk in hartsfield a couple weeks ago and i think i only observed ago few people without masks, but there are plenty of places in this country where people still havent fully embraced, particularly the young group between 1825, have embraced the importance of what i just told you. Again we can only continue to try to appeal to people, you know, i always quote the john kennedyy quote. Dont ask what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. What are asking the American Public to do is become a warrior in the pandemic. Do those five things, we will bring this outbreak to an end. That the ask you about another aspect of this which is also very important. Talk about Health Disparities a lot, and and you mention minority populations. What has the cdc done to ensure the supply vaccines when it comes insufficient and the vaccines at the i promotion of those vaccines time minority communities will get the attention it deserves . The biggest thing we are working very hard on now as you know is to prepare for the distribution of this vaccine. You hurt the National Academy came out with some of the recommendations. We have the Advisory Committee on immunization practices that will ultimately take all the data and they will come out and set up requirements of where they recommend this vaccine used to initially it will be in short supply. Its got to be prioritized and were in the process of putting that together. That faxing what it is prioritize has to be just treated. We to the initial jurisdiction to work in the states to work on their recall microdistribution plans. By the end of this month we will have put those plans to be developed in all of the jurisdictions across the country. Because ultimately weve got to get prepared for the distribution. Will that distribution in recognizing the disparities of the stillness, prioritize distribution among those communities hardestse hit . I think thats going to be one of the key priorities. Ultimately that recommendation is going to come from the Advisory Committee on immunization practices. What is your i think are two major issues right now. Theres the group that is at risk for infection, hugh hewitt occupational, within the group that is risk for a bad outcome if they do get infected, and thats we where seeing the eld, some of the minority populations. Not that they are more at great risk of infection but there at great risk that they do get affected because of comorbidities of the bad outcome. This is why im not excited and im actually, i would like to fight back about anybody that says things to develop their in individual, particularly in minority populations about potentially taking thepu vaccin. Because then you have a process where we have vaccine and we want to distribute to groups that we think are at risk for bad outcomes. But if there is a a selected decision by one group or another not to take the vaccine, so were working hard right now we are programs that we working in partnership with the flu vaccine with the africanamerican immunity and Hispanic Community to increase uptake. As i mentioned it still not over 50 in those communities. Weve made a lot of progress in the last year but we have a long way to go. We are still under 50 . I think its important to build confidence in everyone, particularly and africanamerican, hispanic latina, native American Population to embrace this faxing when it comes on. Clearly theres going to be a prioritization and that will either be by are you a doctor high risk individuals or are you someone who is a high risk for bad outcome . Also be the two priorities. How much vaccine is rigidly available, it will be prioritized. Probably wont be until after the first of the year when we have enough vaccine and a broader availability, to the broader American Public, the first, youro know, 50 million doses will be prioritized for those two populations basedse on outcome or based on risk of infection. Let me turn to testing. As you know rightly or wrongly some of the cdc guidelines as they been expressed have proved very controversial. There are those who say the cdc is advocating fewer tests are actually better. Right, wrong, what do you say to those questions . Absolutely not wrong, definitely a critical part of our Public Health strategy. What the cdc was saying, although and unfortunate wasnt reported correctly, was we were saying that we wanted to place emphasis on testing individuals that have symptomatic illness or individuals that have significant exposure. They could be asymptomatic, or vulnerable populations, like nursing homes, they could be a a Center Medical or Critical Care infrastructure workers or healthcare workers come first responders, all of which could be asymptomatic. And lastly, we set for individuals who may be asymptomatic, but it was prioritized by doctor Public Health person. What we were trying to do is get testing to drive action for a specific Public Health objectives to bring it back. We are seen way too many people on the way to work stop i by drivethrough, get tested and then only findu, out about the result five, six, seven days later. Thats not actual testing. It was unfortunate that one of the networks set would recommend against testing asymptomatic. We did that. The first sentence said you may not need to be tested if youre a sympathetic to the second sentence, we want you and to engage her doctor ofe Public Health person. We are still try to get the focus and glad you brought it up here. E. Testing is a critical part of our Public Health strategy. Asymptomatic testing is a critical part of our Public Health strategy. We just want to do it in a way thats actionable. Let me ask you this followup to this because its so important. When that the guidance came ou, however it was reported, there was not just noise in the media, which there was, but is also noise in the political atmosphere, well call it. Quoting, wemo said, are not going to follow the cdc guidance. I considered political propaganda. His words. So hardly surprising that public is confused and angry, whatever. What do you need to do, what are you doing at the cdc to inspire confidence, to clarify this, to make people understand that you are independent pushing back against politics and just trying to follow sites to keep people healthy . The first thing we did is literally minutes after cnn reported it incorrectly is weve issued a cdc statement on kites which eckley said of the theater just told you. Unfortunately that didnt seem to make the news cycle. What we basically said testing was meant to drive action for Public Healthnt objectives. We said everyone who needs a test is going to get it. Everyone who wants one may not necessarily needed. It wasnt just media. I just quoted governor,. And, of course, i i called y good friend Howard Zucker was in the state Health Department and explained everything to him. He but, unfortunately, you get a lot of people are chosen to try to politicize, and i can just tell you that cdc is a datadriven, sciencebased servicese organization. I am not a clinician or Public Health person, not a politician. My friends at fda is a great oncologist, not a politician. Its disappointing for those of us that i decided to serve, the people want to assume our decisionmaking process is somehow influenced by politics. I can only tell people that i for myself and i know for stephen on that is not influenced by politics. That is not good change people who decide they want to decide one way or the other, this is, there are people from both sides of the s political spectrum at e to try to suggest these organizations are making decisions politically. I can only continue to try to lead 23,000