Dr. Anthony Fauci ruled out Wuhan market origin for COVID-19 in private diary entries

WASHINGTON — Former White House COVID czar Dr.Anthony Fauci privately ruled out a wet market in Wuhan, China, as the source of the pandemic as early as January 2020 despite years of subsequent statements to the contrary, according to explosive diary entries released by Sen.

Rand Paul (R-Ky.).The then-director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) wrote to himself on Jan.26, 2020: “It now appears using epi data and genomic data that the first infection was in early December and was not connected to the market.”“The infections spread among people weeks before the Chinese reported that they were dealing with a new infection and that gave the virus time to establish itself in multigenerational (sustained) spread,” he noted.

“Remember, early on the Chinese were saying that there is no human to human transmission and all the original 27 cases were from the market.”“Now we know the market was not the source, it was the amplifier,” he underscored, adding that he was still convinced “somewhere the virus jumped from animals to humans.”But in interviews throughout 2020 and 2021, Fauci maintained that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, did, in fact, originate in the Wuhan wet market.The excerpts from more than 1,000 pages of diary entries, which Paul published on Saturday, stunned some former Trump administration officials who worked directly with the NIAID chief on the White House COVID Task Force during the first year of the pandemic.“I was one of the seven original members of the Coronavirus task force – stood up in January 2020 – and he never said this to us, even as the source was a subject of intense interest,” Ken Cuccinelli, then the acting deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, wrote on X in response to Fauci’s unearthed remarks.Asked during a “Fox & Friends” interview on April 3, 2020, whether wet markets should be closed to prevent viruses like COVID from emerging, Fau...