Send tips | Subscribe here | Email Alex | Email Tina Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. With help from Allie Bice. When U.S. Surgeon General VIVEK MURTHY stepped back into the spotlight — very literally — last week to brief the press on the spread of Covid-19 and vaccine misinformation, it marked a return to a more public role after six months of operating largely behind the scenes. President JOE BIDEN’s surgeon general, who served in the same role under BARACK OBAMA from 2014 to 2017, issued his first advisory last week, which blamed misinformation on technology and social media platforms for “prolonging the pandemic and putting lives at risk.” But his relatively low public profile thus far in his second stint on the job has been surprising, particularly since a big part of the surgeon general’s job is to use a bully pulpit to improve Americans’ health and wellbeing. Murthy was a prominent voice in the press and other public forums during the general election campaign, and was one of the first people Biden named to his pandemic advisory board during the presidential transition. Along with former FDA commissioner DAVID KESSLER, Murthy was one of two people who took the lead during Biden’s daily briefings on the virus. Murthy’s name came up for a number of big health jobs in the administration. But his lack of managerial skills was seen as a drawback, Politico reported in the fall, which may have hurt his chances of scoring one of the bigger Cabinet posts, such as secretary of Health and Human Services. Murthy has appeared on national television a couple of times this spring, including on MSNBC and CBS. (He made headlines in April when his young son video bombed an interview). But he stepped up his media hits this weekend, appearing on multiple Sunday shows to talk about the rising risk of the Delta variant of the coronavirus, which is spreading across the country, and vaccine misinformation. The White House didn’t respond to questions about Murthy’s public re-appearance, but he is certainly helping fill a void left by former Covid-19 senior advisor ANDY SLAVITT, who departed the White House in June after a four-month tenure that was always intended to be short term. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. ROCHELLE WALENSKY, Dr. ANTHONY FAUCI and Slavitt had been the three main voices from Biden’s coronavirus response team, engaging regularly with the public. With Slavitt’s departure, and with the highly transmissible Delta variant driving a new spike in cases, the administration is redoubling its vaccine push and fighting back against misinformation, especially around vaccine safety. Murthy has been part of the administration’s internal Covid-19 policy response and has been working on the disinformation issue. He’s also been personally affected by the pandemic, having lost 10 family members to Covid-19 in both the U.S. and India. “On a personal note, it’s painful for me to know that nearly every death we are seeing now from Covid-19 could have been prevented,” Murthy told reporters last week. “I say that as someone who has lost 10 family members to Covid and who wishes each and every day that they had had the opportunity to get vaccinated.” The role of surgeon general is to a large extent a public health messaging job — perhaps most famously, the surgeon general’s office has issued a landmark series of reports on the health dangers of smoking that helped discourage tobacco use in the country over the past few decades. Kessler, who has known Murthy going back to his days as a Yale med student (Kessler was the dean of Yale Medical School at the time), described him as “a masterful communicator.” “I remember when we were briefing during the campaign, and I was stumbling trying to explain the shortage of reagents for diagnostic tests,” Kessler told West Wing Playbook. Kessler recalled how he struggled to convey the scientific concepts in laymen’s terms, only to have Murthy deftly come in with a simple-to-understand analogy. “Vivek said, ‘Mr Vice President,’ which is what we called President Biden at that time, ‘just think of reagents as those pods, the detergent,’” Kessler recalled. “‘Not having reagents is like not having detergent.’ And everyone got it. It was the right metaphor. I was stumbling trying to explain re-agents – and he did it with detergent pods.” Kessler couldn’t recall if Murthy actually cited dishwasher detergent or clothes washer detergent when he was briefing Biden. But, either way, “everyone understood – including the boss.” And, hey, at least it wasn’t bleach. Do you work in the Biden administration? Are you in touch with the White House? Are you DANIELLE OKAI? We want to hear from you — and we’ll keep you anonymous: westwingtips@politico.com. Or if you want to stay really anonymous send us a tip through SecureDrop, Signal, Telegram, or Whatsapp here. | 
