“When the children go out into the community, you want them to continue to wear masks when they’re interacting with groups or multiple households,” he said on Sunday. “The children can clearly wind up getting infected.”

This is nonsense. Multiple studies, including one from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, confirm that children rarely transmit the coronavirus. When they contract it, they are also far less likely to fall seriously ill from it. Less than 10% of all coronavirus cases have been among children and adolescents ages 5-17. If anyone is safe from the coronavirus, it would be this age group.

Surely Fauci, who now serves as the White House’s chief medical adviser, knows this. So why is he pushing over-the-top guidelines on an age group that does not need them? Because Fauci, similar to so many other public health experts, is not willing to say that the crisis has passed. He’s not willing to admit that children can go about their normal activities safely or that vaccinated people can stop following restrictions once they develop immunity or that herd immunity is much closer than he’s led us to believe because Fauci has always wanted us to believe the worst.