"They understood this was a wartime effort. "I said, 'You know - heads up - there might be a need for Merck to help here,'" the official recalled.īut it was after the early February phone call that officials felt like J&J had embraced the push, said a second official who was involved in the talks. The official called J&J CEO Alex Gorsky to express concern and later called Merck CEO Kenneth Frazier. The two companies had held some preliminary talks about working together before the Biden team got into the White House, but those proposals had been "at a very small level of ambition" and were "dead by the time we got in" to office, said the official, who knew the CEOs of both companies. That February call helped lead to an agreement with Merck - a competitor that had given up on its own vaccine work - to help produce J&J's vaccine and use its facilities to get it into vials. "We have to take bold action and overwhelm this." "The basic conclusion of that call was, we've got to think much bigger and much bolder," recalled a senior administration official who was on the line. Then came the call, where White House officials got on the line with J&J executives to talk about the urgency of the situation. Its single-dose vaccine looked promising, but even before it had been approved for emergency use, it was clear that the company would not be able to meet its contracted production. "Those are some of the hardest negotiations - I've done a lot of them," said one of the officials involved in the talks. Early talks with Moderna and Pfizer led to increased commitments. By the end of May, there should be enough vaccine doses for every adult in America, he said - a dramatic improvement to his initial timetable for late July.Ī turning point in speeding up that pledge came a few weeks ago, on a Sunday afternoon in early February, during a phone call with Johnson & Johnson executives that had been planned for 15 minutes but stretched for longer than an hour, two senior administration officials told NPR.īiden administration officials had been pushing vaccine-makers to find ways to get more doses faster. President Biden said on Tuesday that a key milestone in the fight against COVID-19 could be reached two months faster than earlier projected.
#Biden notecard how to#
More recently, after appearing to demand the ouster of his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in March, the president was spotted with a sheet entitled “Tough Putin Q&A Talking Points,” which advised him on how to field questions from journalists.īiden’s predecessor Donald Trump drew similar attention in the press for his notes, in one case seen with simple prepared responses – such as “I hear you” – during a White House session with victims and family members of the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida.President Biden keeps a note card in his suit pocket with the running tally of how many Americans have died from COVID-19 and how many have been vaccinated. Still, Biden’s notes have made headlines in the past, with a staffer seen passing the commander-in-chief a missive informing him there was “something on chin” during an event last July. Though the notes were surprisingly specific for such basic gestures, a former White House communications official told Fox News the card followed “a very standard format used by politicians and government officials at public events,” adding that it was also employed by Biden’s former boss, ex-President Barack Obama. READ MORE: Photo shows Biden's Putin 'cheat sheet'
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