I reported last night that South African doctor Dr. Angelique Coetzee, who identified the new Omicron  COVID variant, is cautioning people not to freak out or panic over it. She said since they only discovered it this week they didn’t have the data yet to make a judgment as to whether it wouldn’t be covered by the existing vaccines, as was the immediate speculation because it was heavily mutated. What Coetzee did note that was positive was that of the cases she saw, in her words, the symptoms were “extremely mild.” While she said that could change, that’s what they had seen so far.

However, that hasn’t stopped folks from going off half-cocked. Here’s what Dr. Anthony Fauci said on ABC News’ “This Week with George Stephanopoulos.

Stephanopoulos asked if we knew if the new variant caused “more severe disease.”

Fauci responded:

And we don’t know that. In fact, we were on the phone with our South African colleagues, who have been incredibly good about being so transparent about what’s going on there, on Friday, and we’re meeting with them again today later — a little bit later on, in a couple of hours, to try and find out if the cases that they have identified that clearly are caused by this variant, what is the level of severity in that?

Hopefully, it will be light but, you know, South Africa has a relatively small proportion of the population that’s vaccinated. So you got to take that into the equation when you’re trying to figure out where this virus is really going and what its impact is going to be. But bottom line, George, we don’t know yet what the level of severity will be.

But we do know what Coetzee said, without the filter of Fauci. Now, again that might change as they get more data in, but right now, the cases they saw were extremely mild, and she cautioned against hasty reactions to it. Notice Fauci didn’t say that, when he must know what she’d said. Instead, he focused on the possibility that it might be more transmissible and possibly evade the present vaccines.

"Should we expect to be seeing more lockdowns, new lockdowns, more mandates?"

FAUCI: "It's really too early to say." pic.twitter.com/is8U4gAaE1

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) November 28, 2021

Stephanopoulos asked, “Should we expect to be seeing more lockdowns again, new lockdowns, more mandates?”

Fauci responded:

“You know, I don’t know, George. It’s really too early to say. We just really need to, as I’ve said so often, prepare for the worst.”

While Fauci allowed that this variant might not “go the route that people are saying,” he added:

“But you want to be prepared to do anything and everything.”

In other words, prepare, because here we go again; they may be coming at us with lockdowns again. He’s not ruling it out. This despite the fact that they don’t even know anything at this point about the variant, but they should know that lockdowns make no sense and we’re not going to stand for it again. Even with knowing next to nothing, Fauci is already willing to say we must be prepared to “do anything and everything.”

How long has it been since we were told, “two weeks to flatten the curve”? Yet, here we are with these characters still trying to dictate this stuff to us. Enough. We’re done.