23:41
You get up 5.00 in the morning, you get in, you know, 6:30 or 6:45. You start off with the first meeting is at 7:30 and you get maybe a couple of thousand – truly no hyperbole – couple of thousand e-mails a day. It’s just so much freaking work! I mean, it’s just – it’s a big cluster.
Let’s get everything back the way it was, okay? I’m going to be doing twice the amount of work now because the Biden administration is calling me to do everything. I mean, they don’t approve anything unless I say yes.
My day job is to run a big organization. The NIAID is the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. It’s one of the 27 institutes of the NIH, the National Institutes of Health. I’ve been doing that for 37 years.
I’m a scientist and a physician, not only because it’s an important part of my identity, but because you get a better feel for the bigger picture of a disease. I have trained and picked everybody who works for me right now. They know my goal. They know my vision, which is deeply steeped in science, clinical medicine, public health.
It isn’t only COVID-19. It’s malaria, tuberculosis, influenza, AIDS. This is the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. We do the research to understand a disease and importantly, to develop diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccines.