Former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) chief Anthony Fauci publicly lied about the coronavirus’s fatality rate, initially telling the public it was 2 to 2.5 percent but privately recording in his diary that it was “more like 0.2-0.3%.”
This explosive revelation is found in Fauci’s personal diary documenting his day-to-day duties in the early days of the Trump administration’s coronavirus response. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), Chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, released the diary ahead of Fauci’s appearance before the committee.
In a February 2020 entry, Fauci recorded the number of cases as well as his many media appearances. He also surmised that the mortality rate of the virus was “more like 0.2-0.3 % rather than 2.0%.”
The entry reads:
Tom 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%.
However, that is not what Fauci was saying publicly around that time.
During a March appearance on Hannity, Fauci said the mortality for the coronavirus is “about two, two and a half percent.”
“The mortality for seasonal flu is 0.1. The mortality for this is about two, two and a half percent. It’s probably lower than that. It’s probably closer to one. But even if it’s one, it’s ten times more lethal than the seasonal flu. You got to make sure that people understand,” Fauci said.
That same month, testifying before Congress, Fauci touted those same figures yet again:
Well, understand that the seasonal flu that we deal with every year has a mortality of 0.1 percent. The stated mortality overall of this, when you look at all the data, including China, is about 3 percent. It first started off as two, and now three. 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 ten times more lethal than the seasonal flu.
I think that’s something that people can get their arms around and understand. I mean, people always say, well, the flu. You know, the flu does this. The flu does that. The flu has a mortality of 0.1 percent. This has a mortality of 10 times that. And that’s the reason why I want to emphasize we have to stay ahead of the game in preventing this.
That same month during an appearance on the Daily Show, Fauci told Trevor Noah that “the mortality is about 0.1 percent” for the seasonal flu.
“That’s a lot, and we get used to that morbidity and mortality, but the mortality of this is about 10 times that. It’s at least 1 percent,” Fauci said.
Yet, those figures are not what he recorded in his personal diary in that February entry.
Fauci will be testifying before the committee on Wednesday, July 29, 2026.
The full diary, which also features Fauci marveling at his own fame, can be found here.
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