The New England Journal of Medicine this was not.
When Dr. Anthony S. Fauci’s pandemic diary was made public over the weekend by his Republican nemeses, it provided a rare, unfiltered look at the private thoughts of one of the most polarizing public officials in America as he led the nation through crisis. A typical entry is one dated May 21, 2020. It begins by noting the global death toll from the pandemic (234,100) and continues, typos intact, this way:
“Big front page article abut me appeared in the Washington Post. Very flattering. The situation with my national and international fame is explosive and really unimaginable. It is not hyoperbole to say that today I am the most famous and talked about person in the country and one of the most recognizable peson in the world.”
More than 1,100 pages long and dating from 2019 to 2022, Dr. Fauci’s diary reads like a black comedy of manners in which a 79-year-old social-climbing scientist becomes the face of the government’s response to a pandemic and then the toast of the town — the toast of this town. As the death toll rises, so too does the doctor’s status and self-regard. He falls in with a fast crowd and becomes consumed by his own image.
It’s like Thackeray’s Vanity Fair crossed with The Plague by Camus.
In entry after entry, he chronicles his glittering years on the Washington party circuit. He sips champagne at galas thrown in his honor and gets mobbed for selfies at sceney joints like Cafe Milano. Barbra Streisand calls and calls. Julia Roberts sends flowers. Billy Crystal, Elton John, Brad Pitt and Robert DeNiro are mentioned.
Back then — has it really been six years? — Dr. Fauci became an overnight celebrity when the pandemic struck and the nation looked to someone who could provide answers. It was a terrifying time and in this most credentialed doctor, who had served many presidents and valiantly battled the AIDS crisis, lots of Americans found a foil to President Trump, who was at the time suggesting people play around with bleach. The doctor worked around the clock, appearing anywhere he could to spread the message about slowing the spread and getting the shot.
But there were other Americans who became disillusioned with Dr. Fauci, his methods, his advice and his media ubiquity. To anyone who blamed him for school closures, lockdowns, vaccine mandates they disagreed with and more, the diary entries have come as vindication of the suspicions they held about the character of this man they fault. He was having fun.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is one of Dr. Fauci’s primary antagonists. It was after Mr. Kennedy took over at the Department of Health and Human Services that Dr. Fauci’s diary was discovered on government servers. The health secretary promptly handed it over to another Fauci foe, Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, who made it public over the weekend. On Wednesday, Dr. Fauci is being called to testify on Capitol Hill before the Senate Homeland Security Committee, which Mr. Paul chairs.
Through a representative, Dr. Fauci declined to comment for this article.
Who among us would not be mortified to have their diary dumped onto the internet? The entries Dr. Fauci jotted down during those years were never meant to become public. And many of the entries are scientific in nature, and do concern his fight against the virus.
Still, what a fascinating look inside the Washington whirligig they make.
The town’s elite — the people who invited Dr. Fauci to their parties and put him in their newspaper columns and on their television programs — have been picking through the ego-splattered pages of his diary this week, mordantly amused to see that the good doctor turned out to be such a party boy.
“I went to a book party last night for Jonathan Karl’s new book about Trump” at Cafe Milano in Georgetown, reads the entry on Nov. 17, 2021. “I was totally swamped all night by people wanting to say hello, shake my hands, and take pictures with me. I could not get away from it. Although some people may think that this is great to have people treat you like Elvis Presley, but it was really very unnerving.”
“Chris and I went to a book party for our friend Ruth Marcus (Washington Post columnist)” at the home of David Bradley, former owner of The Atlantic, reads another entry. “Super A list at party: Senator Mark Warner, Kellyanne Conway, Andrea Mitchell, David Ignatius, David Frum, Zeke Emanuel, etc., etc.”
After being honored at a gala at the National Portrait Gallery (“it was the highest level of AAA list you could imagine in Washington DC”), he writes about hanging out with Venus and Serena Williams, Clive Davis and the celebrity chef Jose Andres. “We were invited to go across the street by Jose to his restaurant Zaytinya for after hours champagne.”
Several entries concern an apparently overwhelming number of awards with which he was festooned.
“I have received a lot of honors over the last year and a half from a number of prestigious organizations,” he wrote on a different day. “Unfortunately there are so many of these that it is very difficult to fully appreciate them as they all seemed to pile up in a very intense time frame.”
Another day, he wrote about receiving the “Leonardo Da Vinci Award” from the National Italian American Foundation: “There was a wonderful series of testimonials to me from an amazing group of people: Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino, Leonardo DiCaprio, Francis Ford Coppolla … ”
That’s Amore! But what about the Irish?
“The Irish Ambassador said I was ‘beloved in Ireland,’” yet another entry reads.
Dr. Fauci’s newfound fame put him into the orbit of movie stars and musicians. On Oct. 14, 2020, he wrote: “A FEW DAYS AGO, Julia Roberts sent me beautiful flower arrangement. mailed her my thanks. Scott Atlas still causing problems with his ‘herd immunity’ issue.”
“Had a great call with Barbra Streisand,” begins an entry beneath a line graph of confirmed covid cases in the U.S. “I accidentally butt called her later in the evening and she said that she was going to call me anyway since she wanted to know if there was any difference between the Moderna and the Pfizer product. I told her none.”
“Barbra Called me on my cell phone today and they asked me questions about her booster shot,” another entry reads. “It is always good to hear from her.”
On May 11, 2020, Dr. Fauci wrote: “Hilarious video of Billy Crystal playing me in a Trump dungeon prison,” with a link to this video.
Hovering over it all was the pandemic that would leave more than a million Americans dead.
“I’m supposed to go to an even bigger black tie affair at the home of the French ambassador tomorrow,” Dr. Fauci wrote in November 2021. “I think I am going to cancel out since I don’t want to go through the nerve-wracking experience that I did last night worrying about having gotten infected.”
