Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is accusing former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci of concealing a serious lung condition he experienced in 2021 while continuing to publicly promote COVID-19 vaccines.
The accusation centers on newly released personal diary entries from Fauci that were made public last week by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY). Among the entries is a June 2021 note in which Fauci wrote that a CT scan revealed he had suffered a pulmonary infarction, a condition in which lung tissue is damaged due to a lack of blood flow. According to the diary, Fauci was treated with the blood thinner Eliquis following the diagnosis.
During an interview with Fox News host Laura Ingraham, Kennedy argued that the diary raises significant questions about Fauci’s public messaging during the pandemic and whether Americans were given the full picture about potential vaccine risks.
Kennedy began by listing what he described as repeated misleading statements from Fauci throughout the pandemic.
“Millions of people injured. He lied about masks. He lied about social distancing. He lied about the transmission. He lied about natural immunity. He lied about the capacity, as you just said, of the vaccine to prevent infection.”
“He got vaccinated very, very publicly at a press conference in January of 2021. And then, five months later, he had, and this is the first time that we knew this from the diary, he had a pulmonary infarction, which is one of the adverse events that NIH, CDC, and FDA said are expected from the vaccine.”
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“He never told anybody. He got treated for it privately by the best doctors in America. At the same time, he was telling everybody that that was not…” Kennedy said before continuing his criticism of Fauci’s public handling of vaccine safety.
Kennedy argued that Fauci’s silence amounted to hypocrisy, saying the longtime public health official continued encouraging widespread vaccination while privately dealing with a medical condition that health agencies had identified as a potential adverse event following vaccination.
The diary release has intensified calls from some Republican lawmakers for additional scrutiny. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) has called for accountability surrounding Fauci’s handling of the pandemic, while Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) has indicated he intends to question Fauci during upcoming hearings about whether the pulmonary infarction could have been connected to his vaccination.
Pulmonary infarctions can result from several underlying conditions, including blood clots unrelated to vaccination, and determining causation generally requires far more evidence than a temporal association. Neither Fauci nor his representatives have publicly responded to Kennedy’s latest comments.
Fauci has consistently defended his handling of the pandemic and has maintained that COVID-19 vaccines were safe and effective based on the scientific evidence available at the time.
