Newly exposed entries from Dr. Anthony Fauci’s personal diary reveal that in early 2020 he privately estimated COVID-19’s death rate at just 0.2–0.3%, far below the much higher figures he later gave Congress under oath.
On February 8, 2020, Fauci wrote that he and former CDC Director Tom Frieden agreed the virus was “acting like a bad influenza” and that the real case fatality rate was “more like 0.2-0.3% rather than 2.0%” once a larger number of cases was factored in.
Just over a month later, on March 11, 2020, Fauci told the House Oversight Committee the mortality rate was about 3% overall. When pressed to compare it to the seasonal flu, he said including asymptomatic cases would bring it down to around 1%, 10 times more lethal than the seasonal flu.”
The entry shows that at the time of the February note, Fauci had recorded 34,687 cases and 724 deaths, which calculated to just over 2%. He privately concluded the true rate was dramatically lower.
The diary entries are expected to draw renewed scrutiny as Fauci returns to Capitol Hill on Wednesday, where he is scheduled to testify before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee regarding his newly publicized personal records.
Read the diary entries here.
