Former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci is facing renewed scrutiny after the release of personal diary entries that appear to show he privately considered COVID-19’s fatality rate to be significantly lower than the estimates he discussed publicly during the early months of the pandemic.
The diary was released by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, ahead of Fauci’s scheduled testimony before the committee on July 29, 2026.
🚨Fauci’s diary says he privately put COVID’s fatality rate at 0.2-0.3%. Under oath weeks later, he told Congress it was 10x the flu. The timeline:
Feb 8, 2020 (private diary): case fatality rate “more like 0.2-0.3%.”
March 10 (Hannity): “The mortality for this is about 2-2.5%.… pic.twitter.com/FVoAYZhQ6J
— KanekoaTheGreat (@KanekoaTheGreat) July 26, 2026
Among the documents is a February 2020 entry in which Fauci recorded case numbers, media appearances, and conversations with other public health officials. In the entry, he reflected on the likely case fatality rate of the virus.
“Tom Frieden called me this AM and we discussed various aspects of the outbreak. He and I are on the same page in thinking tht [sic] this is acting like a bad influenza in its transmissibility and that the denominator is much greater than 34,867 (above) making the case fatality rate (CFR) more like 0.2-0.3 % rather than 2.0%.”
The reference to a larger “denominator” suggests Fauci believed many infections were likely going undetected, which would reduce the estimated fatality rate by increasing the total number of cases.
Weeks later, however, Fauci continued citing higher mortality estimates during public appearances while also noting that the true rate could ultimately prove lower as more information became available.
During a March 2020 interview on Hannity, Fauci said:
1/9 — My investigation uncovered that Anthony Fauci kept a diary.
What he wrote privately and what he told the country are two different stories.Today I’m releasing his entries from December 2019 through December 2022. 🧵 pic.twitter.com/58LvmeYkCN
— Senator Rand Paul (@SenRandPaul) July 25, 2026
“The mortality for seasonal flu is 0.1. The mortality for this is about two, two and a half percent. It’s probably lower than that. It’s probably closer to one. But even if it’s one, it’s ten times more lethal than the seasonal flu. You got to make sure that people understand.”
Later that month, while testifying before Congress, Fauci again compared COVID-19 to seasonal influenza.
“Well, understand that the seasonal flu that we deal with every year has a mortality of 0.1 percent,” Fauci said. “The stated mortality overall of this, when you look at all the data, including China, is about 3 percent. It first started off as two, and now three. I think if you count all the cases of minimally symptomatic or asymptomatic infection, that probably brings the mortality rate down to somewhere around one percent, which means it is ten times more lethal than the seasonal flu.”
He emphasized that public health officials needed to remain ahead of the outbreak because of what they believed was a substantially higher mortality rate than influenza.
Fauci delivered a similar message during an appearance on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah.
“That’s a lot, and we get used to that morbidity and mortality, but the mortality of this is about 10 times that. It’s at least 1 percent,” he said after discussing the seasonal flu’s approximate 0.1 percent mortality rate.
The newly released diary entry has prompted questions from critics about the apparent difference between Fauci’s private assessment in February 2020 and the figures he cited publicly in the weeks that followed.
