On Sunday, Joey SoftServe’s “chief medical adviser,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, made his first major television appearance in several weeks. Throughout the COVID “pandemic,” it was Fauci who cheered on all sorts of bizarre rules that don’t seem to have worked. Then suddenly, he disappeared (see Has Anyone Actually Seen Anthony Fauci Recently? and Hump Day Cartoon: Where Is Phony Fauci?)

His chosen venue was ABC’s This Week, hosted by aging Clintonite muppet George Stephanopoulos.

The ostensible reason was to warn us all about the new COVID variant, this one named BA.2, because I guess they ran out of Greek letters or because they figured that no Chinese potentate could possibly be named BA.2.

By Fauci standards, it was pretty weak sauce.

STEPHANOPOULOS: We’ve seen this relaxation of restrictions all across the country right now. Any reason to reverse that?

FAUCI: I don’t think so, George. Not right now. I don’t see us going back into any more really very restrict kinds of restrictions. But you always have to have the flexibility. Remember, when the CDC came out with the modification of their metrics, which would lead to the guidelines of what regions or counties in the country should have a masking indoor, they made it very clear that as you pull back on restrictions, if we do see a significant surge, particularly one that might result in increased hospitalizations, we have to be prepared to pivot and perhaps reinstitution some of those restrictions. But right now, at this point, George, I don’t see that.

There was no scaremongering, no hyperbole, no attacking the motives of people who disagreed with his unbroken string of bad advice. There was no news to be made in this interview, and the fact that he only appeared on one show indicates it was more of a favor from Stephanopoulos than anything else.

One has to wonder if the end for Fauci’s career isn’t nearer than we imagine. Once the COVID pandemic stopped being a public health issue and became an exercise in using a “public health emergency” to supplant the Constitution and the legislative process, the mystique associated with Fauci started to wear thin. His arrogance, thin skin, and incompetence probably did more to galvanize public resistance to the mindless COVID regulations than any other factor. His contempt for Members of Congress and Senators who asked tough questions led to some epic encounters (Rand Paul Absolutely Wrecks Fauci’s Unscientific Claim That He Is the Science, Rand Paul Takes a Blowtorch to Dr. Fauci’s Lies and Excuses About Gain of Function Research) led to some epic verbal brawls on Capitol Hill.

.@RandPaul to Fauci: "[T]he idea that a government official like yourself would claim unilaterally to represent science and that any criticism of you would be considered a criticism of science itself is quite dangerous…It is cheap politics & it is reprehensible." pic.twitter.com/b6JCaaHQTR

— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) January 11, 2022

As more and more documents became public, it became apparent that Fauci had no scruples about lying to Congress on anyone else (BREAKING: Gov’t Docs Prove Fauci Lied to Rand Paul; US Was Funding Gain of Function Research in Wuhan, Senator Rand Paul, Congressman James Comer Send Letter Demanding Answers About NIH Deletion of Gain-Of-Function Information).

Senator Rand Paul vowed to seek Fauci’s removal from office if the GOP takes the Senate in November (Rand Paul Promises a Fauci Reckoning if GOP Wins). Paul has also introduced legislation to eliminate anyone’s ability to imitate Fauci in the future.

GREAT NEWS: Rand Paul Introduces Amendment To Eliminate Fauci’s Position As NIAID Director https://t.co/9QXbJbQoMM

— Brigitte Gabriel (@ACTBrigitte) March 14, 2022

Kansas Senator Roger Marshall introduced the Financial Accountability for Uniquely Compensated Individuals (FAUCI) Act in response to Fauci lying about the availability of his financial disclosure documents.

The FAUCI Act, introduced by Sen. @RogerMarshallMD, would mandate that the financial records for people such as Dr. Fauci be posted on the Office of Government Ethics' ​website.

"Fauci has lost his reputation," Marshall said, after Fauci insulted him.https://t.co/n7RlLm491T

— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) January 16, 2022

Despite what it seems like at times, Fauci is a bright, savvy guy. His scientific advice may be sh**, but he’s a brilliant bureaucratic in-fighter. He can sense the winds of 2024 as well as everyone else. If the GOP gains control of the House and Senate, Fauci will find himself used as a pinata by Rand Paul, and there will be no friendly Democrat chairman to save him. He will be investigated, and what is found will be damned ugly.

There was an air of farewell in Fauci’s interview. Like, he’s already decided that he’s going to retire, and this was just a soft way of announcing it.

If he does retire, I hope that Paul and others take a lesson from the Restoration of Charles II to the British Crown. His father, Charles I, had been beheaded after his defeat at the hands of Parliamentary forces led by Oliver Cromwell. When he was invited back to London eleven years later, he wanted to take vengeance on everyone who’d signed his father’s death warrant. Twenty-four of them, including Cromwell, had already died. Charles II had their corpses exhumed, hanged, and then beheaded. If Fauci retires, I hope that Paul and his friends harry him even in private life, forcing him to spend time and money to defend his role in manufacturing COVID and hiding that fact from the world.

Video Transcript

Let’s bring in President Biden’s chief medical adviser, Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Dr. Fauci, thanks for coming back on “This Week” this morning.

You just heard Nate’s perspective right there, fairly balanced. What’s your take on this BA.2 variant?

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: Well, as was said, it has a degree of transmission advantage over the original omicron, but not multi-fold advantage. So, it’s about 50 to 60 percent or so more transmissible, which means ultimately over time, it might take over as a dominant variant.

Clearly, throughout the world, it’s about 80 plus percent, 85 percent of the isolate. In the United States, it’s still somewhere around 30 percent.

So, it does have an increased transmission capability. However, when you look at the cases, they do not appear to be any more severe and they do not appear to evade immune responses either from vaccines or prior infection.

So, the bottom line is we likely will see an uptick in cases as we’ve seen in the European countries, particularly the U.K., where they’ve had the same situation as we’ve had now. They have BA.2. They have a relaxation of some restrictions such as indoor masking and there’s a waning of immunity.

Hopefully, we won’t see a surge. I don’t think we will. The easiest way to prevent that is to continue to get people vaccinated. And for those who have been vaccinated, to continue to get them boosted. So, that’s really where we stand right now.

STEPHANOPOULOS: We’ve seen —

FAUCI: We can expect to see an increase, yes.

STEPHANOPOULOS: We’ve seen this relaxation of restrictions all across the country right now. Any reason to reverse that?

FAUCI: I don’t think so, George. Not right now. I don’t see us going back into any more really very restrict kinds of restrictions. But you always have to have the flexibility. Remember, when the CDC came out with the modification of their metrics, which would lead to the guidelines of what regions or counties in the country should have a masking indoor, they made it very clear that as you pull back on restrictions, if we do see a significant surge, particularly one that might result in increased hospitalizations, we have to be prepared to pivot and perhaps reinstitution some of those restrictions. But right now, at this point, George, I don’t see that.

STEPHANOPOULOS: How should we be taking advantage of this moment right now.

I was struck by something Anne Rimoin, a UCLA epidemiologist, told “The New York Times” this morning, who said we’ve been wearing rose colored glasses instead of correcting our vision.

Her point is that we should be much more proactive. Does she have a point? What more can we be doing to protect against another surge?

FAUCI: Well, I think she makes a very, very good point. I mean we only still have about 65 percent of our population has been vaccinated and — of the total population. And of those who are eligible for a booster, only about 50 percent of them have been boosted. There are a lot of things that we can do from a public health standpoint.

The other thing we can do — and I hope that we get the funding from the Congress to do this, is to continue to build up our supply of anti-virals, of tests and of the ability to get boosted. I mean we have a number of clinical trials going that are trying to determine what the best combination of boosting is to get both effectiveness and durability. So, we just can’t stand still, particularly as we appear to be in somewhat of a lull in the cases, where cases continue to come down, deaths continue to come down and hospitalizations. That’s no time at all to declare victory because this virus has fooled us before and we really must be prepared for the possibility that we might get another variant and we don’t want to be caught flatfooted on that.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Dr. Ashish Jha is going to be the president’s new Covid coordinator, replacing Jeffrey Zients. He’s never worked in government before, as you’ve pointed out. What advice do you have for him and what’s the most important thing he needs to do?

FAUCI: Well, first of all, he’s a very competent person. I mean he’s been involved in this, not in the government, but from the outside. He’s an experienced public health person.

I think just to get to know the ropes in the government in coming from outside the government into the government. But he’s going to have a lot of help, a lot of encouragement, a lot of collegiality from people like myself, from Dr. Walensky, from Dr. Murthy and others. So I think he’s going to be just fine.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You know, you’ve said you’re going to stay in this job until we get out of the pandemic phase. Of course you’ve been serving your country now for decades. Are we approaching the point where we are past the pandemic phase and you’ll go get some rest?

FAUCI: I’m not so sure, George. I want to make sure we’re really out of this before I really seriously consider doing anything different. We’re still in this. We have a way to go. I think we’re clearly going in the right direction. Hope we stay that way.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Dr. Fauci, thanks, as always, for your time and your information.

FAUCI: Thank you.