It’s been five years since the country was in the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic, but for many Americans, it seems like yesterday.The lockdowns, the missed graduations and funerals, the school closures that led to a generation of children getting behind in their education, the lost businesses – it all amounted to a years-long nightmare for the vast majority of our country.
But it turns out that the man who essentially prescribed it all – former top immunologist Dr. Anthony Fauci – lied to Americans about a crucial coronavirus fact: That it was nowhere near as deadly as he claimed it was.
That’s according to his own diary, a copy of which was obtained by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Republicans ahead of Fauci’s Senate testimony earlier this week.
According to what he wrote, the former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases boss told the American public that the COVID death rate was 2 to 2.5 percent but privately recorded in his diary that it was “more like 0.2-0.3%.”
Paul, who chairs the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, released the diary ahead of Fauci’s appearance before the committee on Tuesday.
In a February 2020 journal entry, Fauci recorded the number of COVID-19 cases and gushed over his fame brought on by numerous media appearances.
He also wrote that he believed the virus’s mortality rate was “more like 0.2-0.3% rather than 2.0%.”
Fauci wrote:
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%.
But that isn’t what Fauci was saying publicly at the time.
During a March appearance on Fox News’ ‘Hannity,’ Fauci told host Sean Hannity that the virus’s mortality rate was “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,” he said.
“It’s probably lower than that. It’s probably closer to one,” he added.
“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.
The same month he made the same apparently claim during congressional testimony.
“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,” he testified. I
“t 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,” he continued.
“I think that’s something that people can get their arms around and understand. I mean, people always say, well, the flu,” Fauci told lawmakers.
“You know, the flu does this. The flu does that. The flu has a mortality of 0.1 percent,” he said.
“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,” Fauci noted.
Republicans were outraged by Fauci’s fawning accounts of himself in his diary as well as the differences between his public and private statements regarding the virus itself.
“In January 2020, I warned China was lying and the COVID virus almost certainly came from China’s coronavirus lab,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) told Breitbart News.
“Tony Fauci’s diary shows how he worked with the liberal media to smear me, cover for China, and lie to the American people,” he said.
“Fauci is a lying disgrace who should be prosecuted. And the left must never be given power again.”