Newly released journal entries from Dr. Anthony Fauci reveal discrepancies between his private assessments and public testimony on COVID-19’s fatality rate.
| PULSE POINTS |
❓ WHAT HAPPENED: Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rand Paul (R-KY) has released previously private journal entries written by former White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci ahead of his expected testimony before a congressional oversight committee, with the records showing Fauci privately comparing the emerging coronavirus in February 2020 to a “bad influenza” and estimating a case fatality rate of about 0.2 to 0.3 percent. 📺 DETAIL: In the February 8, 2020, entry, Fauci recounted a conversation with former CDC director Tom Frieden in which the two agreed that the virus appeared less deadly than early official figures suggested. About a month later, however, Fauci told Congress that available data indicated COVID-19 had an overall mortality rate of about three percent, which he said could fall to around one percent after accounting for asymptomatic and mild infections, making it roughly 10 times more lethal than seasonal influenza. During the March 11 hearing, Fauci stressed that COVID-19 should be treated as a serious public health threat and said the 2009 H1N1 pandemic had been less lethal than the seasonal flu. Representative Michael Cloud (R-TX) questioned Fauci about how Americans should assess the virus’s severity, prompting Fauci to reiterate that the higher estimated mortality rate justified aggressive prevention efforts. The released journals have prompted renewed scrutiny over whether Fauci’s private assessments differed from his public testimony during the early months of the pandemic. Additional diary entries also describe Fauci’s growing media profile, including comments in April and May 2020 about the volume of press coverage and his increasing national and international recognition. 💬 KEY QUOTE: “This has a mortality of ten times that [of the flu], and that’s the reason why I want to emphasize we have to stay ahead of the game in preventing this.” – Dr. Anthony Fauci, March 2020 testimony to Congress |
Join Pulse+ to comment below, and receive exclusive e-mail analyses.