Diary entries released by Sen. Rand Paul show Anthony Fauci privately discussing a possible COVID-19 fatality rate of 0.2% to 0.3% around the same period he told lawmakers the disease’s mortality rate could be about 1% after accounting for undetected infections.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom
Newly released diary entries from former White House COVID-19 adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci are raising questions about whether his private assessment of the virus’s death rate differed substantially from the figures he presented publicly to Congress during the opening months of the pandemic.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, recently made public a collection of Fauci’s writings covering December 2019 through December 2022. The material, identified as “Tony’s Diary Package”, was released as part of the committee’s continuing investigation into the federal government’s handling of COVID-19.
2026.07.24 Tonys Diary Package by yourNEWS Media
The documents show that Fauci privately recorded a discussion in which he and former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Tom Frieden considered a case-fatality rate substantially below the figure Fauci later described during sworn congressional testimony.
The disclosure comes as Fauci is scheduled to appear before Paul’s committee at 8:30 a.m. Eastern time Wednesday, July 29, 2026, for a public hearing expected to examine his pandemic-era statements, federal recordkeeping and the consistency of information he gave Congress.
Paul described the diary as evidence of a divide between Fauci’s private views and his public representations.
“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,” Paul said in a series of statements on X.
The senator also accused Fauci of directing staff members to destroy federal records, an allegation he said he intends to raise during Wednesday’s testimony.
“While publicly posturing as a champion of science, he was privately directing his staff to destroy federal records. This is a blatant violation, a betrayal of the public trust, and further proof that Fauci engaged in a coverup from the very beginning of the pandemic. I’m going to ask him about this when he goes under oath this Wednesday,” Paul said.
The diary’s discussion of COVID-19 mortality is drawing particular attention because of Fauci’s testimony before the House Oversight Committee in March 2020.
During that appearance, Fauci told lawmakers that the reported mortality rate, based on the available international data at that stage of the outbreak, was approximately 3%.
“The stated mortality over all of this when you look at all the data including China is about three percent. It first started off as two and three,” Fauci testified.
Rep. Michael Cloud, R-Texas, then asked Fauci to compare the mortality rate of COVID-19 with that of seasonal influenza. Fauci responded that the rate would probably decline once minimally symptomatic and asymptomatic infections were included in the total number of cases, according to Fox News’ account of the exchange.
“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 10 times more lethal than the seasonal flu,” Fauci said.
“I think that is something that people can get their arms around and understand.”
A diary entry reproduced on Page 19 of the released document records a lower private estimate reached during a conversation with Frieden.
“Tom Frieden called me this AM and we discussed various aspects of the outbreak,” Fauci wrote.
“He and I are on the same page in thinking tht 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 diary entry appears to reflect an assessment that the known case count significantly understated the true number of infections, which would reduce the percentage of infected people who died. The 0.2% to 0.3% estimate was considerably lower than both the approximately 3% reported rate Fauci discussed with lawmakers and the roughly 1% rate he said might result after accounting for unrecognized cases.
The documents do not, by themselves, establish whether Fauci viewed the lower figure as a settled conclusion, a preliminary estimate or one of several possibilities under consideration during a rapidly changing outbreak. Paul and other critics, however, contend that the contrast warrants further questioning about what Fauci believed at the time and how he chose to characterize the threat publicly.
The diary package was released as part of a broader inquiry into Fauci’s pandemic-era activities. Previous reporting about the documents examined what critics characterized as Fauci’s preoccupation with media coverage and public attention.
The same earlier reporting described entries documenting Fauci’s reactions to his public profile and the attention he received during the pandemic. Other coverage has focused on controversies surrounding Fauci’s federal research oversight and his record as a longtime government health official.
A separate profile of Fauci previously examined criticism of research funded during his leadership of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
The diary also records Fauci’s reaction to public criticism from Elon Musk. In entries on Pages 1138 through 1140, Fauci wrote that Musk had begun attacking him on the social media platform then known as Twitter.
“All of a sudden, Elon Musk has started to viciously attack me with tweets on Twitter,” Fauci wrote.
“Many people in the press and outside are asking about and concerned about the attacks on me by Elon Musk.”
Musk had publicly called for Fauci to face legal consequences in a December 2022 post on X. After Paul released the diary package, Musk responded again with another post addressing Fauci.
“Fauci smelled it and he also dealt it,” Musk wrote.
The dispute over Fauci’s private mortality estimate is expected to become one of several lines of questioning when he appears Wednesday. Paul has already indicated that the hearing will address Fauci’s diary, his public testimony and allegations involving the handling of federal records.
The committee may also examine whether statements made during the early pandemic accurately conveyed the uncertainty surrounding infection rates, undetected cases and mortality projections. In early 2020, those figures changed repeatedly as testing expanded and researchers learned more about asymptomatic transmission.
The central issue for congressional investigators is not simply whether early estimates evolved, but whether Fauci provided lawmakers with a candid account of his own contemporaneous assessment and the range of possibilities being discussed privately among senior health officials.
Fauci has not been quoted in the submitted material responding to Paul’s interpretation of the diary entry or explaining the difference between the private 0.2% to 0.3% estimate and his congressional statement that mortality could settle near 1%.
The original report on the diary disclosure was published July 27 and attributed to Margaret Flavin, whose previous work is available through her author page.
Wednesday’s hearing will give Fauci an opportunity to address the diary under oath and explain whether the entry represented his actual estimate of COVID-19’s likely fatality rate, an informal hypothesis discussed with Frieden or a temporary assessment that changed as additional data became available.
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