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Description

Andy’s back! He’s joined by his expanded In the Bubble team, including new regular contributor Dr. Lisa Fitzpatrick and his son Zach, who returns with one of his signature “Zach facts.” This episode weaves in Andy’s audio journal from his time as Senior Advisor for Coronavirus Response in the Biden White House. Listen as Andy and Dr. Lisa go inside the administration’s urgent, war-like effort to vaccinate the public. Plus, Dr. Fauci like you’ve never heard him before.

 

Keep up with Andy on Twitter @ASlavitt and Instagram @andyslavitt.

 

Follow Dr. Lisa on Twitter @askdrfitz.

 

Check out In the Bubble’s Twitter account @inthebubblepod.

 

In the Bubble is supported in part by listeners like you. Become a member, get exclusive bonus content, ask Andy questions, and get discounted merch at https://lemonadamedia.com/inthebubble/.

 

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Check out these resources from today’s episode: 

 

• Read more about Andy’s time in the Biden White House: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/06/11/health-202-andy-slavitt-describes-life-white-house-coronavirus-task-force/
• Watch Dr. Lisa on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/GrapevineHealth
• Order Andy’s book, Preventable: The Inside Story of How Leadership Failures, Politics, and Selfishness Doomed the U.S. Coronavirus Response: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250770165

 

Stay up to date with us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at @LemonadaMedia.

 

For additional resources, information, and a transcript of the episode, visit lemonadamedia.com/show/inthebubble.

Transcript

SPEAKERS

Andy Slavitt, Dr. Tony Fauci, Zach Slavitt, Dr. Lisa Fitzpatrick

Andy Slavitt  00:18

Welcome to IN THE BUBBLE. I’m your host, Andy Slavitt. And I’m back. And I’m so happy to be back. I just love that new theme music. First off, I want to thank Dr. Bob Wachter, who was our guest host for holding down the fort while I was away. He was a hell of a host. And even more, I want to welcome Dr. Lisa Fitzpatrick, who will be joining me running the show. Hey, Lisa.

Dr. Lisa Fitzpatrick 

Hey, Andy, how you doing?

Andy Slavitt

I’m Pretty good. We’re gonna talk about you the second question first. I went to someone’s house for dinner last night. And they said, the person there said, oh, I really liked Dr. Bob. And I said, did you like him better than me? And he said, Yes. Is that rude?

Dr. Lisa Fitzpatrick 

At least he was honest. You have to give him points for being honest, which is in short supply these days.

Andy Slavitt 

So you take us over nice is what you’re saying?

Dr. Lisa Fitzpatrick 

Absolutely.

Andy Slavitt 

Well, you’re both honest and nice. Lisa Fitzpatrick. I’ve been a fan of yours for a long, long time. Many people know you from YouTube. As Dr. Lisa, can you tell folks a little bit about yourself?

Dr. Lisa Fitzpatrick

Sure. I’m a medical doctor and a CDC trained medical epidemiologist says that’s a big word. That means I’m a public health expert. But lately, I’ve been out in the community and people know me as Dr. Lisa, on the street, I have a YouTube channel, people can find me on YouTube making videos to try to make health information more relatable and understandable.

Andy Slavitt

And what I think you’re great at is painting a picture telling a story that I think it’s just hard to get from just listening to someone talk about something by going out and just talking to people and listening to people I find the work you do extraordinary. Well, I think is what you’re going to bring to the show as people are going to see us we’re going to now get the stories behind the events. We’re not just going to hear about the events. And I think that’s going to be a really exciting addition to the show.

Dr. Lisa Fitzpatrick

Yeah, and I think the storytelling really bring the data to life, because we’re seeing a lot of charts and graphs and people talking about math and efficacy and numbers. But when you put faces and stories to those numbers, it sort of paints a different picture and helps people understand or connect in a different way.

Andy Slavitt 

I agree. And how are you a dad jokes?

Dr. Lisa Fitzpatrick

I love dad jokes. You got one for me?

Andy Slavitt  02:40

Oh, you’re gonna be so sorry you asked me that. I want to start this episode by talking about you. Don’t look around. I mean, you, you listening, you listening to this podcast. That’s who I want to talk about. Because you’ve been through a lot. And I want to say, whatever you’re doing now, on the running machine, got your headphones on, you’re making dinner, you’re getting up in the morning, you’re eating a snack, you know what you’re doing? You have been through a lot this last year and a half. And we all have. You been through disruption. You’ve been through a plague. Think about that. You’ve been through politicians playing games with your life and your health, like the health of your family. You’ve been through massive uncertainty, maybe that’s as hard as anything.

Andy Slavitt

You’ve been through stress; you’ve been through stress. And I’m sure you’ve been missing your family. You’ve been missing your friends and your routine. And now we’re at this interesting point where that seems to be all over. Or is it? But before we wrestle with that, because I think the show’s gonna be a lot about wrestling with that question. Just do something strange. Just congratulate yourself. Congratulate yourself for getting through it. No matter how you did it. No matter how hard you thought it was, no matter whether you thought you could at every moment or not, you’re here. And I guarantee you, you’re stronger. And I know everybody’s uncertain if it’s really over. You’re tired of it all. But you are moving back to cherish the things that you’re missing in your life, or at least I hope you are.

Andy Slavitt  04:25

The uncertainty has been reduced. And for whatever you’ve lost, and some of you lost a lot, you held on. And there are certain things you didn’t lose, the people you still have in your life, your friends, your loved ones, the things that people that got you through this. They’re still here and the things that you missed. They’re starting to come back. And I bet they’re even more valuable to you than they were before the pandemic. These things in your life that maybe we take for granted, like toilet paper. Very valuable. Think about it, what would you do without it? And movie theaters, those are fun. And your sports team, or your church or whatever, whatever it is, to me, I discovered elastic sweat pants. I’m not going back. I’m telling you that right now.

Andy Slavitt 

So I want to ask you to do a little mental exercise that I tried to do when I was in Washington, oh, I should tell you, I was just in Washington but I’ll get to that. Play this […] exercise, picture, what other people have gone through this last 18 months. And come from the most generous kind as place you can. What have teachers that gone through over the last year and a half. What a nurse has gone through. What a doctor may have gone through. Picture a widow who lost someone to COVID, an orphan someone who lost a parent or both to COVID. And do you know anyone who lost a job, or business or a dream, or an experience they were looking forward to, just picture them.

Andy Slavitt  06:06

Those are the people you’re running into every day at the store. And those are the people were side eyeing. Yep, it’s all those people. That just, it’s gonna be a little bit harder now. But picture the non-mask wear, picture the neighbor that you had a disagreement with. Those are all people that are the same people. Pick your Scott Atlas, just kidding, don’t spare a thought for Scott Atlas. But just imagine most people were just doing the best they could, and some very hard circumstances and didn’t have a clue as to what was going to happen. So spare some love, in particular for the hard to love, because they don’t get much love. I just went off on this kind of emotional tangent, but you guys give me a break. I’m out of practice. But in a sense, this IN THE BUBBLE 10-part series is really designed to bring closure to some of the pandemic open issues.

Andy Slavitt 

And it’s a sign of whether it’s successful if at the end, we’re able to come to grips with a lot of the things that feel uncertain to us and to move on. And that move on with perfect certainty, but move on knowing that we have made COVID a manageable challenge. We know how to deal with manageable challenges. You’ve got lots of them in your life, and we’re just going to be able to put this in that same category. So let’s get it out of the scary and into the manageable challenge, though, but we’re gonna have to do some stuff to get there. Anyway. That’s my sermon. What do you think, Lisa? Good sermon?

Dr. Lisa Fitzpatrick

Impressive, Andy. Well, what about you? What would be the sign that you have some closure?

Andy Slavitt 

Well, I guess if I could say something nice about Scott Atlas, that would bring me a long way.

Dr. Lisa Fitzpatrick

Well, before we go to the 10 themes, which begin on Monday, I think people want to hear about your time in the White House. How was that?

Andy Slavitt

Well, you know, it was a duty, like you’ve done many times in your life. And it was meaningful, and it was purposeful. And I worked with great people. And it was scary at times. It was heavy. I’m glad I did it. I’m glad to be back.

Dr. Lisa Fitzpatrick 

Well, we’re glad you’re back. But I heard a rumor you kept a bit of an audio journal while you were in the lighthouse, is that true?

Andy Slavitt 

I just recorded my thoughts in the phone every once in a while. Thinking I might come back to IN THE BUBBLE. So maybe I’d even play some of those.

Dr. Lisa Fitzpatrick

So instead of starting with our 10-episodes, that’s first step back in time a little bit and talk about your time in the White House. But before we do congrats on your book, how can people get it?

Andy Slavitt 

Well, thank you. I think it just came out, man. Yes, it’s called Preventable if you haven’t heard me say it a million times already. But yeah, you can get it all the usual places you get books, or you could hear Bradley Whitford read it.

Dr. Lisa Fitzpatrick

From the West Wing.

Andy Slavitt 

Yes. Bradley Whitford from the West Wing.

Dr. Lisa Fitzpatrick 

Impressive.

Andy Slavitt

Yeah, and get out. He’s a funny guy.

Dr. Lisa Fitzpatrick

So what motivated you to write this book?

Andy Slavitt 

I felt like I couldn’t get it all done in 280 characters. So I needed to go big. I need to get bigger.

Dr. Lisa Fitzpatrick 

And you’re masterful at 280 characters.

Andy Slavitt 

The more brief I am the better. But I felt like I guess I’d say I felt like we needed somebody to record for all the people that we lost and all the things that we lost kind of this first draft of history, which is a bit of a cliche, but that really says what is it that we needed to remember, needed to know and plus, I had a lot of good stories because I spent time as people who listen to the show now with the white house with Jared Kushner with Deborah Burks. So I saw a lot of stuff on the inside and I’m like, there’s none of that I need to keep to myself. So that’s all in the book along with my opinions. A little bit of humor, and hopefully people can read it and experience the roller coaster ride, but without the fear. That’s my hope.

Dr. Lisa Fitzpatrick  10:07

Well, in any case, congrats on your book. I can’t wait to read it. I’m sure a lot of people are excited and looking forward to reading it as well.

Andy Slavitt 

Thank you.

Dr. Lisa Fitzpatrick 

But in the meantime, can we do a Zach’s facts?

Andy Slavitt

Oh, you’re gonna call out Zach? All right, Zach. Zach. Lisa wants you on the phone, Zach.

Zach Slavitt 

Oh, okay.

Dr. Lisa Fitzpatrick

Zach, what’s your fact? And can you introduce your dad’s first clip, I was really surprised by it.

Zach Slavitt 

Hey, so my facts today I wanted to compare the COVID numbers. From the first day, my dad was in Biden’s administration versus the last day, which was just last week. And so courtesy of Politico, the first day, there’s more than 185,000 cases every day. And on the last day, they were only down to 15,000. So clearly a big improvement. And a lot of that’s from the vaccine distribution, and the work that he did. So now let’s hear the story of how that happened.

Andy Slavitt 

I didn’t want to serve in the Biden administration originally. I actually made a lot of explicit commitments that I wouldn’t. Don’t get me wrong. Public Service is one of the most meaningful things I’ve ever done. But I’d made a number of promises to people, not the least of which was do my own family life. Lana and I are newly empty nesters. We had long plan to move to California when Zach went to college. And there we were. And after the cold of Minnesota and all the restrictions brought on by the pandemic, we got in the car and drove out. I’ve been having one off conversations with the Biden transition team and the campaign team, and even members of the Trump transition team. I’m trying to be helpful. But it’s pretty clear a transition wasn’t going to happen because one man wouldn’t let it happen.

Andy Slavitt  12:00

He believed Trump that is that he was meant to be president. And they’ve long since stopped caring about the pandemic. So as the transition team formed, I was really happy to see that Jeff Zients was placed in charge of the pandemic response. […], my view of the White House couldn’t not do better. And I tweeted that at the time. Jeff is capable and as good a person as I know. And so whenever guilt I was feeling about not going back to the White House to help, it went down quite a bit. Because between Ron Klain, who managed the Ebola response, his chief of staff, and Jeff, we couldn’t be more capable hands. I knew the country would start to feel a palpable difference. Part of me thought though, I supposed to be there? How could they do this without me. But that was my ego.

Andy Slavitt 

And unfortunately, it was a manageable and irrational part of me and I forgetting all about it. But then it happened. Two days after Christmas, Jeff Zients called, his pitch was direct, tone kind of somber. I need you. The problem is too big. The job is lonely. There’s no transition. Let’s share this together. He asked me to come to the White House. And my first response was to tell him all the reasons why I couldn’t. Among other things, my avoidance of guilt disappeared. If I said no, I couldn’t really pretend that I wasn’t on the hook if things didn’t go well. My second thought was, this must be really bad. So I thought about my life and I thought about the challenges the country was facing. I’d be able to count my servers that 130 days, maybe Lana can go with me, but even then she couldn’t. I’d be back home by end of May early June at the latest.

Andy Slavitt 

After a lot of hemming and hawing and the final conversation with Lana, I decided to do it. On January 15. I packed a few bags. Kiss Lana goodbye and got on the plane. 1000s of people were dying each day. Virtually nobody was getting vaccinated. There was no inventory of vaccines. And people weren’t even confident they would take the vaccine if they were offered it. I landed in DC at an apartment block from the White House. The city was on lockdown, not just from COVID, but from the insurgency of January 6. It was a warzone in every way. And I was on my 300th day in a row wearing elastic and hanging out at home. And now I had to get an oval office shape and landed in a war zone without any weapons. And with rumors that there was a new type of COVID that was evading vaccines.

Dr. Lisa Fitzpatrick  14:43

Wow, that’s really powerful, Andy. First let me just say thank you. Thank you for your service. I think we’ve come to now see you as a fixer. But let me circle back to something you said you didn’t want to serve in the White House. What’s that about?

Andy Slavitt

When I got there I really changed my mind once I walked in. But you know, it’s like being put into a machine, like and being launched to outer space, and everything else stops mattering. And you’re just in this bizarre continuum where you’re completely submerged. But when I got there, I quickly felt what an honor it was to be there, I felt proud to be having a duty to take on. And it wasn’t fun because people were dying. And I could feel that. But I was glad I did it.

Dr. Lisa Fitzpatrick

It’s interesting to hear you reflect on this and relate that you weren’t sure you want it to go? Because I remember texting with you one day after I saw you. I think it was on television. And I said, you look tired. Are you getting enough sleep? And you said, I’ll sleep when the pandemic is over. So with an attitude like that, I’m surprised to hear that you even hesitated for a moment knowing that you could jump in and help.

Andy Slavitt  16:00

Yeah, well, as I said, I’m glad I did. And it took a little bit to get me to think about it the right way. Well, and people don’t know that you were part of the Biden transition team played a very prominent role.

Dr. Lisa Fitzpatrick 

Well, I was actually one of the co-chairs of the Health Policy Committee. And that was a really extraordinary experience, because there were so many incredibly smart, thoughtful people thinking about how policy so it was a really great experience. But here we are. So I want to know, are you wearing sweats again?

Andy Slavitt

Oh, yeah, I let back to elastic. Absolutely.

Dr. Lisa Fitzpatrick

So you landed you got there? And what did you find?

Andy Slavitt 

It’s a very rare luxury to be able to focus on just one thing. For me, that one thing is vaccinations. Everything about them, how they’re manufactured. The raw materials, you need to make them, how you fill and finished the vials, how they get from point A to point B. How to find more people to administer, how more can be produced and how fast the Trump administration did promise that 100 million Americans will be vaccinated by January. But the reality we found was different. There weren’t even 100 million vaccines produced. In fact, we didn’t have any. It was a mystery as to what was happening to the vaccines that had been produced. As a measure of how well it was going with there was one fundamental question that we had, how many vaccines were getting into people’s arms?

Andy Slavitt

Now, I expected some inefficiencies. There may be 80% to 90% of vaccines were getting into people’s arms. But when we finally pulled the data together, the result shocked me 46% only 46% of the vaccines that had been sent to States were making it into people’s arms. Americans were angry, impatient, and variants were spreading. And we had a basically a nine to five vaccination effort. With no real monitoring of how many of the vaccines that people were wanting were actually out there and where they were going. People wanted answers. But the answers appear to be terrible. So one of the metaphors we ended up deploying, that we used maybe too frequently, was this notion of treating this like a war effort. And this just mean something simple. They will come to vaccines our approach to fixing things is to overwhelm the problem. Do everything possible, leave no stone unturned.

Andy Slavitt  18:42

So we move from sending out vaccines, relatively haphazardly, to standing up 90,000 vaccination sites, to the point where down 90% of Americans live within five miles of a vaccine. FEMA, in the military provided 7000 vaccinators and we move to a 24 by seven production schedule. We set public goals and deadlines. And before you knew it, we went from that 46% number to 80% of vaccines were getting the people’s arms, and it was happening in more places. There was another impact. Seeing the FEMA sites on TV, seeing massive amounts of people get vaccinated. Really started to buoy the country and get people feeling more confident. I knew people will still waiting to get appointments. But I also knew that now, this is going to happen much more quickly than people thought. Still, the Daily death tolls weighed heavily.

Dr. Lisa Fitzpatrick

I know as an outsider, Andy, I definitely felt the tide turn quickly. And I know you just said that daily death tolls weighed on you heavily and that’s understandable. But was there a mood shift in the White House at some point? When you started to think okay, we’re really making progress now.

Andy Slavitt  20:00

You know, we worked really hard to be positive all the time, you know, anytime someone did a small thing, to move things forward, to recognize it, to celebrate it, to give credit for all the people that were working hard. And we had a spirit of positivity, in part because the challenge, I think, was so big. And, you know, I don’t know that everybody thought this way. But I felt like, normally you feel it in what you do, you could make a mistake or two, because you’re always going to, I think part of the reason why things felt so challenging is because it felt like if we made a reasonably sized mistake, it was going to end up with more people dying. And that was probably the biggest thing to come to grips with.

Dr. Lisa Fitzpatrick

After the break, the vaccine effort ramps up really quickly.

Dr. Lisa Fitzpatrick

Welcome back. For Andy and everyone else in the Biden administration, it wasn’t enough to get things right. They also had to make up for so much last time.

Andy Slavitt

We decided speed is everything. That was one of the most important decisions we made. Vaccinate carefully and slowly, and we lose to the variance, vaccinate quickly and aggressively. And we have a chance to win. In retrospect, I really think there could not have been a more important factor in our success. There’s a lot of decisions that have bearing on the outcome than that meaning everything. And the problem we had was for one of the few times in my life, we couldn’t afford to be wrong. More people would die. Let me focus on one specific decision we had to make. And the decision was whether or not to shift to giving people one shot per day in delaying the second dose versus the recommended two doses per day.

Andy Slavitt  22:09

Now England had decided to give only one shot. And they were vaccinating more people, even though the protocols called for two. There were calls in the press here in the US from some of the most prominent doctors on TV, who were telling us we had to follow suit. Some said we were making an enormous mistake. The mutants were growing, people were at risk, there didn’t seem to be enough vaccines, we had to get more people covered. Now, vaccinating more people with fewer vaccines was, in fact a way to get more people vaccines, and it was the obvious answer to them. Decisions like that are tempting. We got our scientists into a room to debate it more than once to keep questioning ourselves. And every time they did, we decided not to.

Andy Slavitt

And we decided that no matter what, we were going to follow what the scientists believed. For the very reason that two doses were recommended in the first place, a higher degree of protection might be needed to fight the most difficult variants. And that turned out to be correct. But it wasn’t a popular decision. The press and certain experts kept insisting we were doing the wrong thing. But in my experience, armchair critics never bear the responsibility for making the wrong decision. But there was also another reason for our decision. And that comes back to speed. We were growing confidence in our ability to increase the speed of vaccinations. So we believed that we could do both. Give people high levels of immunity and vaccinate everyone who needed it. In fact, we got up to 4 million vaccinations per day.

Andy Slavitt  24:09

A rate no one imagined considering we were a long way from what we’ve inherited. We’ve pulled up the date to vaccinate all adults from the end of the year to September, to the end of July, to the beginning of May, and then to April 19. One day in the spring. Pictures started showing up on the internet. A vaccinated people hugging a grandmother and a granddaughter caught my eye. The granddaughter was holding a new baby that had been born during the pandemic. I stared at it for a long time. It felt like blue sky and sunshine breaking through after a whole year of dark clouds. We were going to give people some hope.

Dr. Lisa Fitzpatrick 

And we have so much hope, we really do. Those are some tough decisions. Andy,

Andy Slavitt 

I’ll tell you there were a few I got wrong. People are used to this pandemic know that you take an action in one day. And it takes two to three weeks for it to show up in the data. So you realize you vaccinated a lot of seniors. But it’s a few weeks before the cases start to drop among seniors and a few weeks before the hospitalization start to drop. So you kind of hold your breath. Because you’re like, okay, it should be happening right about now. Twice a day, we would get reports one time in the middle of the afternoon was on the number of vaccinations, and then the evening, it was on the number of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. And when that email sent up in my inbox, oh, it’s almost like unwrapping a present every day. Because when those numbers finally started to drop, it was pretty magical.

Dr. Lisa Fitzpatrick

And were there any celebratory rituals in the White House when those data would come?

Andy Slavitt

Yeah, I mean, there were brief, brief moments of emails back and forth, when the number exceeded our target, and always thanking people. You know, it was always about thanking people and less about taking credit. And when I used to go out and lead these press conferences, I used to thank the vaccinators and the doctors and the nurses that the truck drivers, and everybody that had a part because it took 1000s of 1000s of people to get just even a vaccine into someone’s arm. And I always felt great thinking about those people. There was a story of a soldier who was from East Los Angeles, who had been deployed to Afghanistan. And he came back and he was home and he got his assignment. And his assignment was to go to East Los Angeles and vaccinate his own community. Wow. And he vaccinated his grandmother’s friends, and people he grew up in this neighborhood. And he did an interview, where he was smiling. He was a 23-year-old kid, he was smiling and he was crying. And he said that he never expected in his whole life, you get deployed to zone community.

Dr. Lisa Fitzpatrick

Wow, that’s beautiful. So once it looked like you’d gotten the vaccine effort into a really good place, it sounds like it was time for you to tackle some of your other goals, you had some big picture stuff in mind.

Andy Slavitt 

While it’s true that our single purpose was to vaccinate the country, it didn’t mean there weren’t other objectives. Another underlying goal, that connected just about everything, to me at least, was trying to help restore people’s faith in our government, that trust, broken over long periods of time, but quite frankly, broken more explicitly over the last number of years, needed to be recovered. One reason this was important was to get out of the pandemic, with limited loss of life. We’ve needed to address these historic differences in our country, and make people trust the ability to take the vaccine. But we faced these historic differences, this bad faith deamination of science and scientists and our institutions, particularly the CDC and the FDA.

Andy Slavitt  28:14

They were increasingly belittled by the last administration. And, you know, getting vaccinated being a good citizen wearing a mask. It depended on the compact, that you were hearing the truth, and could have faith in the people at the helm. There’s a second even more important reason we wanted to restore trust. This broader sense that deep state is working against our interests, that experts have become unreliable, and that government is incompetent at managing big problems, is threatening to our very notion of our democracy, and our bedrock institutions to handle the crisis.

Any Slavitt

And if democracy can’t handle the crisis, it’s in serious jeopardy. So I was handed a big opportunity personally, to change that blueprint. When I was asked at one of my first assignments to take charge of public communication. Now I think of myself as somebody who has at least a decent understanding of how the public has been reacting to and considering the pandemic, the anxiety, the uncertainty, the exhaustion, the mistrust, the anger, and all these emotions, color and how we heard things. So rather than over promise, as the prior President had, saying that the pandemic was gonna end any day, trying to fill people with good news and then failing and getting the country fatigued. Decided the only way to do this was to begin with the truth, with the straight talk with listening. And so we set up these three times a week briefings, that Dr. Fauci, Dr. Walensky and I just basically spoke in plain English about what was happening.

Andy Slavitt

Thank you for joining us. I’m Andy Slavitt, Senior Advisor with the White House. There’s been a lot happening over the last week and over the last 24 hours. And we appreciate you joining these regular briefings. We’re working hard and executing our plan, which begins with a frank and open dialogue with the American public. So there’s clarity into what we see, what we’re working on, what actions were taking, and in both the successes and the hurdles we face.

Andy Slavitt  30:29

So we’re headed in the right direction. But as you heard the President say, we’re not there yet. The war against COVID-19 is far from over fire from one. The worst thing we could do right now would be to mistake progress for victory. If we let our guard down now, we will see more of our fellow Americans get sick and die unnecessarily. I want to talk directly to young people about how full of opportunity this season is for them. It’s May. And for young people, it’s traditional season for graduations, and time when very accomplished and wise adults, share free life advice along the lines of live up to your potential, make the world a better place. And of course, use sunscreen. Today, I’d like to join a little bit in that tradition. My message to young people, of course, is simple. Get vaccinated, whether you’re a graduate, still in high school, in college, just out or more than a little bit out. It’s the most important thing you can do right now.

Andy Slavitt 

In part, I think my views came from my experience with this podcast IN THE BUBBLE, from talking listening to you, from my own sense of how people like to be talked to and what they were missing. And that decision proved to be so important and fundamental. I’ll just read from you from one text I got. “Andy, I can’t thank you enough for all the work you’ve done for the nationwide vaccination effort. […] has been volunteering with our country since December. I remember feeling overwhelmed and exhausted during those early days of the vaccine rollout when demand greatly surpassed supply. And we’d have to turn away desperate people, I’d come home, turn on the news and become demoralized when hearing comments like everyone who wants a vaccine can get a vaccine from the past administration, false information that made our job so much harder. Cut to the days after inauguration day, when I could see or read your interviews. And I realized you were telling the country exactly what we were seeing on the ground, what the problems were, and how the administration was going to help solve them. I remember coming home and telling Adrian,” this is her husband, “that the vaccine rollout would improve drastically. Because you and your team, were living in reality, and working with us to just get it done.”

Dr. Lisa Fitzpatrick 

The worst thing we can do right now would be to mistake progress for victory. You said that line, Andy, back in April, and I think a lot of people are living in this liminal space. Not quite sure what’s going on wondering, are we making progress? Or have we achieved victory? How would you answer that today?

Andy Slavitt

I would say we’ve made substantial progress. I think the world’s a lot safer right now. And I think if you’re vaccinated, you know, I hope you’re feeling like you can get back to your life. Remember life before COVID was not risk free. And maybe you have one more tiny risk that you add to everything else in your life, but it’s no greater than those other risks. And it’s time I think people got to bring back the things in the life that matter to them. So I hope people feel a little bit celebratory. I know it feels hard to go from one extreme to the other. It does happen that fast. I mean, I will tell you, you should people should feel confident that and you’re an epidemiologist, so maybe you can put your two cents in here. But once you get enough blanket immunity coverage, it does happen as quickly as it’s happening. I know it feels like you know, we’ve been at this so long that How could it end so quickly or get so much better so quickly? But I think that’s kind of the way it works, isn’t it with the epidemiology?

Dr. Lisa Fitzpatrick 

That’s exactly how it works. And, you know, people make excuses other excuses for why we’re seeing such a drastic reduction in cases and deaths and It’s really because of the vaccines. There’s no other explanation.

Andy Slavitt 

Yeah, I do see that, I did hear, I don’t know if you saw this that after the 1918-1919 pandemic, it took people a while to get back to their old selves that there was a sort of hard adjustment people were feeling.

Dr. Lisa Fitzpatrick 

And I think we’re going through that now. I see a lot of people out in the community who have been vaccinated, and they’re still wearing their masks while they’re exercising outside. And we shot a video a couple weeks ago asking people about whether or not they wanted to take off their mask. And they said, No, I think it’s too soon. So I think it’s going to take you know, everyone has to graduate from mask wearing, and even social distancing at their own pace.

Andy Slavitt 

That’s right.

Dr. Lisa Fitzpatrick 

I think it’s gonna take a while for some people. Coming up, Andy wraps up his time in the administration.

Dr. Lisa Fitzpatrick  36:17

Welcome back. Let’s go back to the White House with Andy, for the last time.

Andy Slavitt 

It’s one of those beautiful, idyllic days at the White House. I’m standing on the north lawn, about to do some media. For one of the last times, today is the day I’m winding down. I have a mixture of a lot of thoughts. So here’s a few. The numbers today show that cases are down 95% from when we took office, the death rate is dropped to roughly 350 people per day, when it was about over 3000 limit when we arrived. Currently, 64% of adults have been vaccinated up from about 2% when we got here. Close to three quarters of adults over 40 have been vaccinated. And there are very few hotspots anywhere in the country right now. Things could change, but our economy is beginning to come back. We’re beginning to vaccinate the globe. And people are hugging again.

Andy Slavitt  37:22

I mean, the appropriate amount of hugging. And as I read this, I realize that what seemed impossible does seem like it was going to happen no matter what in retrospect. Of course, it was not. But a country has many topics to deal with. We’re not quite done. We need to vaccinate kids. We need to vaccinate people around the globe. And we’ve got many unvaccinated pockets here in the US. And what about all the stuff that’s happened? Loss, the anxiety, the holes in our lives? And of course, we have some problems that never disappeared, shootings, climate change, many others. Many people are ready to come back from the pandemic. And some people still aren’t. I’m eager to get back to IN THE BUBBLE. Because I think that’s one of the things we’re going to talk about. But first, I’m just going to spend a few minutes enjoying this beautiful day.

Dr. Lisa Fitzpatrick  38:21

Well, you set up what you want to do with the podcast beautifully, Andy, can you tell us a little bit more about it?

Andy Slavitt 

Well, I’m really excited to do it with you. I think we can really bring a real conversation that people, tell real stories, and have a real dimension for the things that people are feeling right now. I don’t think it’s going to be entirely about the pandemic. I don’t think it’s entirely going to be about any one thing I think it’s going to be about, really, that we’ve carved out the 10 topics that I think people most say they need to hear about and understand in order to feel like they can move on with their lives and get some closure. And I think we’re gonna have some great guests. I think you’re gonna get some beautiful stories. I think we’re going to mesh it all together. I think we’re gonna have some fun. But I think this is going to be something that people are really gonna want to listen to.

Dr. Lisa Fitzpatrick

So I have so many questions for you. But I’m not the only one who has questions. And as you might expect, your listeners are really curious about what you did while you were gone. You want to answer a few?

Dr. Lisa Fitzpatrick 

Sure.

Dr. Lisa Fitzpatrick 

Okay, first up. Here’s an email we got from Leslie Allen. Leslie says “I would like to know how Andy stayed connected to his family while working so many hours so far from home. We appreciate your sacrifice, exclamation point. I would like to express my deep gratitude for all that he and the entire COVID-19 team did for this country. You will not be forgotten for what you accomplished in record time.”

Andy Slavitt 

Well, that’s pretty nice. A lot of people besides me deserve that sentiment. You know, we made the decision, my wife and I that I was gonna go do this alone while she got things set up here in California, and that allowed me to take an apartment right close to the White House and not have to worry about any distractions to work hard. And, you know, we touch a lot over text, you know, we have, we have two grown-ish sons 23-year-old and 19-year-old people know Zach. And you I was a little bit worried about Zach and his health, people might know that he had, and he still has some of the symptoms from COVID that are bothering him. But he was also it’s started in January, was at school, and was enjoying himself. And so you know, I tried to stay connected. But it was one of the reasons why I couldn’t do this forever. It’s there’s no perfect way to stay in touch with somebody. I think Lana really wanted me to just get the job done.

Dr. Lisa Fitzpatrick  40:58

So we have another question for you from […], “How much credit should honestly be given to Trump for the vaccine delivery and rollout? I want to be fair to my Republican family members and friends.” Hmm.. Interesting.

Andy Slavitt

So first of all, I think we should have no problem with giving out credit, freely. the country should understand the success of the vaccine as a two-decade effort that began with scientists creating this mRNA platform. And that was funded by Democrats by Republicans. The work was done by people in the private sector by people in the public sector. And you know, this habit of people usually have of pointing fingers when things don’t go well. But stepping up to take all the credit when something does go well. It’s just a little too common and too obvious. So I would say, I’ve got no problem, giving credit where credit is due. Now people know that. And if you read my book, you’ll know that I think Trump made a lot of very fatal mistakes, and not even mistakes. I think there were things he did purposely, that really hurt this country and cost a lot of lives. So I’m not going to tell you that I’m overly generous. But as the book lays out there were three people Peter Marks in the FDA, a guy named Barney Graham who worked for Tony Fauci.

Dr. Lisa Fitzpatrick  42:23

I know Barney, longtime friend.

Andy Slavitt 

Awesome. And then Rick Bright from who you also know, from BARDA, they dreamed up the idea of doing what became known as Operation Warp Speed. They’re three career, folks, you know, they were not part of the Trump administration, but the Trump administration supported them funded them. And I have no problem with him taking credit for that, that when it comes to actually the rollout of the vaccine, they really didn’t think that through they didn’t have a plan together. And there was a lot to be desired there. But certainly, I hope people view this as an American success story, and soon a global success story, not owned by any one participant.

Dr. Lisa Fitzpatrick 

Well, I have one more question, our final question. A lot of people want to know about Dr. Fauci, who’s really become a celebrity. It’s fascinating to me, because I’m also an infectious diseases doctor. And I’ve known about Dr. Fauci for a long time. So it’s interesting to watch his celebrity, any insight knowledge you can share with us?

Andy Slavitt

He’s a real jerk.

Dr. Lisa Fitzpatrick

That’s not what I was expecting you to say.

Andy Slavitt

No, because nobody would say that. He’s a kind, funny, thoughtful person who goes the extra mile to make people feel included by remembering their names by teasing him by joking. And, you know, he’s very takes his job of talking to the public very, very seriously. And he’s very good at it. He was just knighted by the country of Italy. So he’s actually Lord Fauci, next time you see him you can call him Lord Fauci. And, you know, I think people should understand I mean, he’s been getting a lot of criticism from Republicans in the Senate, and hope they understand that, you know, Marsha Blackburn, essentially attacked him and said he should be fired. Hope she understands that, for the last two decades, Dr. Fauci has been working on this mRNA platform. And on January 11, he downloaded the genome sequence from Coronavirus, and on January 13, sent it over to Moderna to begin working on a vaccine. So I don’t know what Marsha Blackburn was doing on January 11, or January 13th. But she’s got to be careful about trying to cast out real scientists who are doing real science.

Dr. Lisa Fitzpatrick  44:54

Yeah, I think we’ve seen a lot of that during the pandemic. So yes, Dr. Fauci is Beloved. But before we go today, less you think the White House let Andy leave without a little bit of a fight. Here’s some audio from the White House farewell call for Andy.

Dr. Tony Fauci

Rochelle and I and a bunch of the crew. We’ve put together a song for you. Rochelle is the lead singer together, Courtney and Kate, and we have in the background, we have me, Ben and Bashara with the back beat, bass in the background. And we practice a lot. This particular thing. So what we’re going to do it you know, it’s a short song, it’s only about 15-20 seconds, but it expresses how we feel about you. You’ll notice the voices of us, particularly Rochelle’s high pitched and Courtney’s Arkansas drawl. So here it is.

Andy Slavitt  46:49

You guys are very talented and very nice. So I was gonna June 9th. But after hearing that, I’m going to leave June 8th.

Dr. Lisa Fitzpatrick

Well, we’re grateful for all you do while you’re away from the show, Andy. But you’re back. And we’ve got a lot of work to do. So I’ll talk to you on Monday.

Andy Slavitt 

Let’s go get them.

CREDITS

Thanks for listening to IN THE BUBBLE. Hope you rate us highly. We’re a production of Lemonada Media. Kryssy Pease and Alex McOwen produced the show. Our mix is by Ivan Kuraev. Jessica Cordova Kramer and Stephanie Wittels Wachs still rule our lives and executive produced the show. And our theme was composed by Dan Molad and Oliver Hill, and additional music by Ivan Kuraev. You can find out more about our show on social media at @LemonadaMedia. And you can find me at @ASlavitt on Twitter or at @AndySlavitt on Instagram. If you like what you heard today, most importantly, please tell your friends to come listen and please stay safe, share some joy and we will get through this together.