If Fauci remotely cared about the things he claimed to care about, he would have stepped away a long while ago, and stopped his constant parade of television appearances. But if there’s one constant in our current political culture, it’s that becoming toxic just encourages doubling down. Becoming a hate object to millions means gaining an equally passionate fanbase on the other side urging you to do your worst.

So of course it’s time for Fauci to send up a trial balloon on banning the unvaccinated from flying.

A COVID vaccine requirement should “seriously” be considered for domestic air travel in the U.S. as a response to the Omicron variant of the virus, NIAID director Anthony Fauci told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Monday.

“When you make vaccination a requirement, that’s another incentive to get more people vaccinated,” Fauci said. “If you want to do that with domestic flights, I think that’s something that seriously should be considered.”

“The group we’re really concerned about is the unvaccinated people because even if this virus is inherently less severe, just the volume of the number of cases that we’re going to have could actually put a stress on the hospital system,” he said earlier in the interview.

Fauci also said the CDC is considering shortening the isolation and quarantine time for essential workers who have been exposed to or contracted the virus, after it shortened the quarantine time for health care workers last week.

Because you know… science.

New York’s vaccine mandate has already become a horror show, but guys like Fauci and their supporters cite uptake numbers while refusing to consider just how toxic the whole thing is becoming to growing numbers of Americans.

Would banning unvaccinated people from traveling increase vaccine rates? Probably. 

There are two categories, roughly, the “hell nos” and the “not yets”. Most of these efforts are aimed at nudging the latter, but it moves just as many into the former category. Meanwhile the inherent civil rights abuses are building without actually accomplishing much of anything.

Except of course to keep Fauci on television. 

The endgame of any bureaucracy is its own power. And the bureaucrats don’t run for office so they don’t particularly care about anything else. 

The Dems are starting to pivot away from the backlash. But Fauci isn’t worried about that. And it’s the bureaucrats who have the power.