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Rand Paul releases Anthony Fauci's pandemic-era diary notes. Here's what they tell us

NPR · back to the audit
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., published a tranche of diary entries over the weekend made by Dr. Anthony Fauci during the COVID-19 pandemic. The 1,141-page document, which was released over the weekend and was no longer available on the website on Monday, came ahead of Fauci's appearance before a Senate committee on Wednesday.

For years, Paul and Fauci have differed over the origins of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Fauci has asserted that the scientific evidence points to a spillover -- whereby the virus would have found its way from an animal into its first human host, and then spread at that point from human to human.

Felicia Goodrum, a virologist at Dartmouth College who spoke to NPR from the American Society for Virology meeting in Minneapolis, says that it's possible that Fauci may have been less certain in private with his colleagues as they were racing to learn about the new virus than he was in public where he had to assure a population that was panicking over the rapidly emerging pandemic.

Goodrum says the market was cleared before it was possible to take any samples. However, she says the genetic data 'maps all initial cases to that market' and 'none to, for example, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where they have accused the virus of having been created or released.'

The article is structured as a Q&A/explainer. It includes: Paul publishing a thread on X describing the diary; virologist Robert Garry disputing the lab leak theory ('no actual evidence for it'); details from the Jan. 26, 2020 entry where Fauci wrote 'we know the market was not the source, it was the amplifier'; the Feb. 1, 2020 conference call where only 2 of 12 scientists supported a natural origin; Goodrum noting science is iterative and Fauci wasn't 'given any latitude' to change his conclusions; Fauci's Aug. 24, 2021 diary entry calling Paul's inquiries 'conspiracy theory like letters' and 'an amazing and unbelievable waste of our time.'