5 takeaways on Fauci’s diaries during COVID-19 response

In years’ worth of journal entries, Dr. Anthony Fauci wrote about the uncertainty surrounding the origins of COVID-19, the media attention he received during the pandemic and his “unique” relationship with President Trump.

The office of Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) released the entries, which Fauci wrote while he led the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, ahead of the longtime health official’s Wednesday testimony before the Senate Homeland Security Committee — which Paul chairs.

Here are five things to know from Fauci’s diary entries.

Expressed uncertainty about source of COVID

During the early months of the COVID-19 outbreak in China, Fauci was unsure about the origins of the virus. The two leading scientific theories are that the virus officially known as SARS-CoV-2 jumped from animals to humans at a wet market in Wuhan or it leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. 

“We know the market was not the source, it was the amplifier,” Fauci wrote on Jan. 26, 2020. “Having said that, somewhere the virus jumped from animals to humans.”

Fauci also noted that during a Feb. 1, 2020, call with U.S. and international health experts, officials were in disagreement about COVID’s origins.

He wrote that Ron Fouchier, the deputy head of the Department of Viroscience at Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands, said “he was sure this could occur naturally,” putting him in agreement with Christian Drosten, the director of human virology at the German Center for Infection Research at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin.

But Fauci wrote that the nine other officials on the call believed “deliberate insertion” was possible, indicating they leaned toward the lab leak theory. Those officials included Francis Collins, then the director of the National Institutes of Health.

Former FBI Director Christopher Wray said in 2023 the bureau “has for quite some time” assessed that COVID “most likely” originated from a lab incident in Wuhan. Last year, the CIA said in a “low confidence” assessment COVID most likely originated from a lab leak.

Took some credit for state lockdowns

During a January 2024 interview........

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