Newly released personal notes contradict the former NIAID director’s public testimony under oath about the virus’ severity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By Steven Richards<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Dr. Anthony Fauci privately believed that the death rate of the COVID-19 was much lower than he told Congress just one month later, according to a record kept by the health official from February 2020. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The diary entry was made public by Sen. Rand Paul, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, prior to Dr. Fauci\u2019s testimony earlier this week. During his appearance, Fauci refused to answer any substantive questions and cited the 5th Amendment more than 110 times. <\/p>\n\n\n\n During his time as the leading government health official during the COVID-19 pandemic, Fauci kept a meticulous record of his meetings, phone calls, and other day-to-day activities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Fauci has faced scrutiny from Republicans for years for his role in the early response to the COVID-19 pandemic as a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force that included recommendations for school closures and social distancing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On March 11, 2020, as the coronavirus spread beyond China to Europe and the United States, Fauci told the House Oversight Committee that he estimated COVID-19\u2019s fatality at 3% and told lawmakers it was much more deadly than the seasonal flu. <\/p>\n\n\n\n “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 told the committee<\/a> at the time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n “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 continued. “I think that is something that people can get their arms around and understand.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n But, in a diary entry from just weeks before his testimony on Capitol Hill, Fauci memorialized a phone call with former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Tom Frieden in which both agreed the real \u201ccase fatality rate\u201d was \u201cmore like 0.2-0.3%.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cTom Frieden called me this AM and we discussed various aspects of the outbreak. He and I are on the same page in thinking tht [sic] 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%,\u201d Fauci wrote in the February 8 diary entry. <\/p>\n\n\n\n You can read Fauci\u2019s notes below: <\/p>\n\n\n\n File<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe \u201ccase fatality rate\u201d was \u201cmore like 0.2-0.3%\u201d, Fauci’s personal notes reveal<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n