Takeaways from Anthony Fauci’s COVID-era diaries

A diary played an unusual role in a contentious Senate hearing Wednesday – musings from Dr. Anthony Fauci, a scientist who became a leading voice in the U.S. response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Sen. Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican, for years has accused Fauci, the longtime top infectious disease official at the National Institutes of Health, of lying about the origins of the coronavirus. In previous hearings, the now-retired Fauci denied the accusation, calling it “preposterous.” On Wednesday, he invoked the Fifth Amendment in declining to answer more questions.

But Paul drew public attention to the latest proceeding by releasing more than 1,000 pages of a long-running diary that Fauci kept – entries that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told Fox News his agency extracted from government computers and provided to the GOP-led committee.

Paul drew on selected excerpts to argue that Fauci’s “private record tells a different story” than what he told the country.

Some of the entries already were reflected in Fauci’s 2024 memoir and in interviews at the time – including the uncertainty that he and other scientists faced as they tried to understand a never-before-seen virus and how best to fight it. Here are some takeaways from the diaries, including quotes that have been edited to remove typos:

Did Fauci say one thing privately and another thing publicly?

Diary entry from January 26, 2020, about whether infections were connected to a market in China where animals were sold:

“It now appears using epi data and genomic data that the first infection was in early December and was not connected to the market. The infections spread among people weeks before the Chinese reported that they were dealing with a new infection and that gave the virus time to establish itself in multigenerational (sustained) spread. Remember, early on the Chinese were saying that there is no human to human transmission and all the original 27 cases were from the market. Now we know the market was not the source, it was the amplifier. Having said that, somewhere the virus jumped from animals to humans.”

Fauci publicly used almost the same wording a few weeks later in an interview with USA Today: “Almost certainly, somewhere, somehow a bat infected an intermediate host who infected a human. What epidemiologists feel is that the market was an amplifier of something that was already going on. So it didn’t necessarily start in the market, but when people congregated in the market they got infected from each other as opposed to all of them getting infected from whatever animal there was in the market.”

Those comments were discussing the very beginning of frantic efforts to figure out the origins of the virus. In other diary entries, Fauci discussed bringing together government and non-government scientists who wondered about whether it could have been a lab leak, a theory Paul champions.

Today there isn’t definitive proof but many scientists believe the virus most likely emerged in nature and jumped from animals to people – and that the market was an early source of spread. Fauci has long said that he was open to both theories but that there’s more evidence supporting COVID-19’s natural origins, like with its cousin SARS.

Fauci’s frustration with Trump

Fauci’s back-and-forth relationship with President Donald Trump – who initially praised the scientist but eventually derided him – drew lots of press attention. Fauci recorded his perspective of good and bad days in multiple entries.

Diary entry March 11, 2020:

“We went in and presented to the POTUS and he asked good questions, many of them to me. He agreed and was clearly concerned more about the health of the American people than he was about the economy, which he said would recover.”

Diary entry Aug. 4, 2020, Fauci describes a White House meeting with Trump and other administration officials where Trump was angry with multiple participants including him:

“He started raving that we are seeing more cases only because we are doing more testing,” Fauci wrote, continuing that he told the president, “Increased testing does not cause cases. When you increase testing you will of course pick up asymptomatics whom you might otherwise not notice. However, when you have increased percent positives and increased hospitalization, and increased deaths, that means that there are truly more cases.”

Fauci reflected on his media attention

The diary is full of entries that start with a lengthy recounting of each day’s events and then move on to Fauci’s increasing media and celebrity attention.

Diary entry May 13, 2020:

“Had a wonderful Instagram discussion organized by the ONE Campaign with Julia Roberts. She was absolutely fabulous. She embarrassed me somewhat when I sat down in the chair and appeared on the screen through Zoom, she put her hands in front of her mouth and said ‘Oh my God. It’s Dr. Fauci, he is here.’ Then she went on to say that I was her personal hero and how happy she was to have this conversation with me. We discussed COVID-19 and its potential impact on the developing world. I told her that we have a moral responsibility to help and also we have enlightened self-interest in that if the outbreak continues in the developing world, it will always be a threat to the rest of the world. Also, we discussed the importance of including the developing world in the vaccine trials.”

Fauci chronicled Trump’s bout with COVID-19

Fauci recounted a call from Trump’s then-Chief of Staff Mark Meadows when Trump was sick in an entry that used “sxs” for “symptoms” and included details about Trump’s temperature, his oxygen level, which had dropped to worrying levels, and the decision to give the president an antiviral medication.

Diary entry October 4, 2020:

“Mark Meadows called my cell while I was walking on the C & O Canal at around 8:30 AM to ask my advice about when the POTUS could go out publicly again. I mentioned that the CDC guidelines say 10 days from the onset of sxs. His sxs started Thursday, Oct. 1 and so 10 days would be Saturday, Oct. 10. Mark told me that on Friday his temp was 103 and his O2 sat was in the 80s. That triggered the Remdesivir. Today (Sunday) he is up and about in his room and is afebrile. O2 sat is improved and he feels much better. I told Mark to send the POTUS my best wishes.”