Fauci’s Private Diary Reveals Early Uncertainty on Covid Origins and Personal Reflections on Pandemic Fame

When Dr. Anthony S. Fauci wrote in his diary on January 26, 2020, the world was only beginning to grasp the novel coronavirus; a full-blown pandemic had not yet been declared. The entry shows the nation’s top infectious-disease expert considering whether the virus emerged from a Wuhan “wet market” where live animals were sold. “Now we know the market was not the source, it was the amplifier,” he noted. “Having said that, somewhere the virus jumped from animals to humans.”

Those private reflections entered the public record last weekend when Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, released more than 1,100 pages of Dr. Fauci’s typewritten daily notes. The disclosure is part of Paul’s long-running investigation into whether the virus leaked from a laboratory and whether Dr. Fauci misled Congress about the possibility.

The diary does not contain the definitive evidence the senator seeks. Instead, it reinforces previously released material showing Dr. Fauci grappling with a rapidly evolving crisis as scientific understanding shifted. Nevertheless, the publication has intensified a deeply polarized political battle over the virus’s origins and Dr. Fauci’s legacy.

The documents also portray a figure preoccupied with his own prominence, documenting interactions with celebrities such as Julia Roberts, Joan Baez, and Barbra Streisand. They capture the immense pressure he faced as the public face of the government’s response while contending with what he described as “slanderous lies” spread by “extreme right elements in society.”

On Wednesday, Dr. Fauci is scheduled to testify under subpoena before the Senate Homeland Security Committee, which Mr. Paul chairs. Although former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. granted Dr. Fauci a preemptive pardon, Mr. Paul has repeatedly referred him to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution.

“What he wrote privately and what he told the country are two different stories,” the senator posted on the social media platform X.

Mr. Paul’s office did not respond to inquiries regarding how he obtained the diary. The typewritten format suggests Dr. Fauci may have composed the notes on a government computer, possibly for his memoir published in 2024. After this article’s publication, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. stated he provided the documents to Mr. Paul, characterizing them as “government records created on a government computer by a federal employee during one of the most consequential public health emergencies in history.” Dr. Fauci declined to comment.

The debate over a potential laboratory leak—whether accidental or intentional—has persisted for years. Some Republicans embraced the theory after President Trump promoted it early in his first term. Democrats largely dismissed it, arguing Mr. Trump was deflecting blame onto China and distracting from his administration’s pandemic response. Dr. Fauci has consistently maintained he remains open to the lab-leak hypothesis but believes the evidence points to a natural origin.

Central to the controversy is whether the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which Dr. Fauci led for nearly four decades, funded “gain-of-function” research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Such research, which Dr. Fauci abbreviated as “GOF” in his diary, involves modifying viruses to study their evolution and pandemic potential. It is subject to strict government oversight. Dr. Fauci has repeatedly denied his agency funded such work in China; Mr. Paul insists it did. “If anybody is lying here, senator, it is you,” Dr. Fauci told Mr. Paul during a heated 2021 hearing.

Early in the pandemic, the public-health establishment largely dismissed the lab-leak theory as a conspiracy. Dr. Fauci echoed that sentiment in a January 31, 2020 entry: “There have been conspiracy theories that the virus was given GOF by inserted mutations and deliberately or accidentally released in Wuhan.” Yet the diary, like previously released emails, reveals significant private uncertainty.

When a respected scientist raised concerns the virus might have been engineered, Dr. Fauci convened a conference call with leading virologists and evolutionary biologists. According to the emails, Dr. Fauci indicated that if suspicions were confirmed, scientists would need to alert “appropriate authorities,” including the FBI. “There was not total agreement” on the call, Dr. Fauci wrote. Of the 11 participating scientists, only two were convinced of a natural origin; the rest were uncertain. Dr. Fauci recorded no personal conclusion.

Mr. Paul cited the entry as proof the scientific community was more divided than Dr. Fauci publicly acknowledged. He also highlighted the “amplifier” comment as evidence of dishonesty, though Dr. Fauci made the same statement publicly in a USA Today interview three weeks later.

Dr. Fauci, 85, retired from government service at the end of 2022 after advising seven presidents on crises from AIDS to Ebola. A fixture in Washington, he was a regular at events such as the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner. The pandemic, however, thrust him into an entirely new stratum of celebrity, as he himself recognized.

“It is not hyperbole to say that today I am the most famous and talked about person in the country and one of the most recognizable” in the world, he wrote following a flattering front-page profile in The Washington Post.

The entries brim with references to Hollywood figures, several of whom appeared starstruck. Barbra Streisand called seeking vaccine advice; when Dr. Fauci mentioned listening to her music via Alexa, she confessed unfamiliarity with the device. “I accidentally butt called her later in the evening,” he recorded, and when he played her music through the assistant, “she absolutely loved it!” Joan Baez painted his portrait. Julia Roberts introduced him at an awards ceremony. “She is so charming, natural, fun and amazingly beautiful,” Dr. Fauci wrote. “When my image came up on the screen… she gasped and said that every time she sees me her throat gets dry and she gets nervous.”

Mr. Paul mocked the disclosures on social media, writing, “While America buried loved ones, Anthony Fauci was counting headlines that doted over him,” and sharing an AI-generated image depicting Dr. Fauci as a teenage girl writing in a diary.

The senator has pursued the origins of Covid-19 and Dr. Fauci’s role for years. Recently, several agencies, including the Department of Energy and the Central Intelligence Agency, have assessed that a lab leak is the more likely scenario. Upon returning to the White House in January 2025, President Trump redirected the Covid.gov website—previously used by the Biden administration to promote vaccination—to a page proclaiming “LAB LEAK: The true origins of Covid-19.”

Last year, Mr. Paul released earlier emails, including one in which Dr. Fauci asked then-NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins to “please delete this email after you read it”—evidence, the senator argues, of an effort to withhold information from Congress.

Critics have spent recent days combing the new records for apparent contradictions. In a 2022 ABC News interview reflecting on his 50-year career, Dr. Fauci stated he had “nothing to do” with school closures. Yet a March 2020 diary entry records that he “convinced” New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio to close city schools and spoke to a top aide to California Governor Gavin Newsom, who subsequently “decided to close the schools in California as well as the bars and restaurants,” based on Dr. Fauci’s recommendation.

On Monday, Mr. Paul released an additional 500 pages of records from 2001, documenting Dr. Fauci’s work with President George W. Bush to establish a program delivering AIDS drugs to Africa. Mr. Bush later awarded Dr. Fauci the Presidential Medal of Freedom. “Those who know Tony do admit one flaw: sometimes he forgets to stop working,” Mr. Bush said at the ceremony. “He regularly puts in 80-hour weeks. And from time to time, he’s even found notes on his windshield left by co-workers that say things like, ‘Go home.'”

Source link