Senator Rand Paul, chair of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, released a collection of diary entries written by former White House COVID‑19 advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci. The documents, covering December 2019 through December 2022, were made public as part of the committee’s oversight investigation into pandemic management.
In a statement, the senator highlighted a perceived discrepancy between Fauci’s private notes and his public statements. He described the diary as evidence that the former advisor “kept a different story for the public than for his staff,” suggesting a cover‑up of the pandemic’s mortality rate from its early stages.
The entries detail Fauci’s own calculations of COVID‑19 fatality rates. While he had testified that the overall mortality, including data from China, was around three percent, the diary notes a lower case‑fatality estimate of 0.2 to 0.3 percent, based on a larger denominator of infections.
One page records a conversation with former CDC director Tom Frieden, where both officials considered the virus to resemble a highly transmissible but less lethal influenza strain, reinforcing the lower fatality estimate.
The diary also contains Fauci’s frustration with a public figure’s criticism on the social media platform X. He noted that the attacks had become a source of personal irritation and concern among the press.
In response, the critic posted a series of remarks on X, suggesting that Fauci had “smelled it and dealt with it.” The comments were part of an ongoing public debate over the handling of pandemic data.
Dr. Fauci is scheduled to testify before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Wednesday, July 29, 2026, at 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time, where the diary’s contents are expected to be discussed in further detail.
