Welcome to POLITICO's West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. With Allie Bice. Send tips | Subscribe here| Email Alex | Email Max Like millions of Americans, when CDC Director Dr. ROCHELLE WALENSKY had a question about Covid-19, she had to Google it. Walensky was one of the Biden health officials briefing reporters virtually on Feb. 3, 2021 when JEFF ZIENTS , the White House's "Covid czar," kicked it off by touting the administration's efforts to advance equity in the pandemic response. "FEMA has partnered with CDC to launch vaccination sites that use processes and are located in places that promote equity, deploying CDC's Social Vulnerability Index," he said in remarks that began shortly after 11 a.m. The CDC director started stressing. At 11:22 a.m., Walensky's chief of staff, SHERRI BERGER , wrote an email — one of dozens obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request by the conversative group Americans for Public Trust and shared with West Wing Playbook — with the subject line, "For presser ASAP." "RW asked for the markers for SVI, can you help?" Berger wrote, using the acronym for the Social Vulnerability Index, which is one way the government measures different communities' potential risk levels in the event of a disaster. CHRISTOPHER JONES, the deputy director of the CDC's Program, Performance, and Evaluation Office, essentially copied and pasted parts of the CDC website's fact sheet on SVI and sent it back. Meanwhile, Walensky, who had assumed the lead job at the agency just two weeks before, was trying to find out more about the CDC's SVI while keeping her composure for television. She turned to the internet's most popular search engine. "I've never googled while on live [TV] so today was a first :-)," she wrote in an email to top staff afterward. "It was not visible to viewers that you were googling (either on cnn screen shot or on the white house live screen shot)," ANNE SCHUCHAT , then-principal deputy director at the CDC, wrote back. "I need to fix the camera issue at home. I have reporters telling me that it was 'floating' :-)," Walensky responded. Schuchat reassured her via e-mail that she "looked great on cnn (to me anyway!)." The CDC didn't respond to requests for comment. The behind the scenes Googling is illustrative of how difficult Biden's Covid team has found it to be on the same page — reading from the same script — amidst a once-in-a-century pandemic. Walensky has had a rough entry into her current post. The former chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital and a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, she did not have much experience with federal agencies and their alphabet soup of acronyms when she started last year. She got the job, in part, because of her close relationship with Dr. ANTHONY FAUCI, who told POLITICO last year that she was "a friend" who he'd "strongly recommended" for the role of director of the CDC. Walensky also called Fauci her "mentor, my hero in truth, and my friend" during a prize ceremony in March last year. She recalled that after she met Fauci the first time and shook his hand, she told a friend: "I'm never washing that hand again." The recent relationship between the two could probably use a scrub. On Walensky's decision to lift the masking guidance last May, Fauci recently told the New York Times , "It wasn't like, 'OK, let's have a Zoom call tonight about the pros and the cons of the mask mandate.' That didn't happen." The Times asked whether he tried to change Walensky's decision beforehand and he replied, "You have to know the decision is being made before you modify it." Walensky has also conceded missteps in recent interviews as she tries to learn from mistakes in her second year leading the CDC. The internal emails sent during her early days in the job paint a picture of an earnest policy expert struggling to get a handle on her new role. On Feb. 12, ahead of a presentation on vaccinating federal workers, for instance, Walensky asked Schuchat: "Will you be able to chime in if there are questions here? I am not familiar with the details but can be if you need me to get up to speed. I'll be doing schools most of the day." Eleven days later, Walensky wrote an email to staff following a roundtable with the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies, chaired by Rep. ROSA DeLAURO (D-Conn.). Walensky expressed relief that it was over, and that the questions were, in her words, "softballs." A rough write-up circulated internally at the CDC of an interview Walensky had conducted with The New York Times on Feb. 19 also reveals that she was clear-eyed about the challenges ahead, especially on messaging. Asked by reporter SHEILA KAPLAN what she thought the hardest part of the job would be, Walensky said that the CDC under the Trump administration struggled to communicate with the American people because of confusing, mixed communication. "A thousand flowers blooming–everyone doing their own thing, so no cohesive message to mitigate situations," she said, according to the rough write-up of her interview which does not appear to have been published. "I think we are just trying to clean up." SEND YOUR HOT TAKE — We want to incorporate more of your feedback. Is there something we missed in today's edition? Do you have a tip to share or a thought on our coverage? Send us an email or text and we will try to include your thoughts in the next day's edition. Can be anonymous, on background, etc. Email us at westwingtips@politico.com or you can text/Signal Alex at 8183240098 or Max at 7143455427. Do you work in the Biden administration? Are you in touch with the White House? Are you STEPHEN BREYER, Supreme Court justice? | 
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