“There are things, even if you’re vaccinated, that you’re not going to be able to do in society. For example: indoor dining, theaters, places where people congregate.” So says Dr. Anthony Fauci in his latest pronouncement on COVID-19. Why the continued restrictions? “That’s because of the safety of society.”

Oh, so in other words, the only way to have a safe society is to have no society.

He added, “We want to make sure that people continue to wear masks despite the fact that they’re vaccinated,” probably into 2022. Double masks, in fact. Masks that Fauci opposed last spring.

Fauci, at age 80, is still the face of public health during this pandemic, and for reasons we don’t entirely understand. He’s been wrong a lot, and his dishonest flip-flops are practically legendary. Plus, he’s been director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984, where he’s now the highest-paid of the federal government’s four million employees. At this point he’s more swamp creature than medical doctor, and taxpayers deserve better.

(Naturally, he obtusely blames Donald Trump for denying facts and the “political ideology divisiveness.”)

Of course, people in most of the country already are going out to eat, wearing masks to their tables and taking them off during their meal. Movie theaters are open, even if attendance is still low. Most schools are open to some degree, and in some districts there are no mask mandates for students. So it may be news to people that we evidently weren’t supposed to be doing those things for the last 10 months.

Moreover, Fauci made his “safety of society” declaration at a time when distribution of vaccines that are 95% effective is going gangbusters, with more than 64 million doses already given and an estimated 240 million total doses by the end of next month. Cases are dropping precipitously at the same time.

Yet his warnings about how far away “normalcy” remains could in some ways be self-fulfilling if he discourages people from taking the vaccine. Why bother if it doesn’t mean returning to normal?

As The Babylon Bee humorously put it, “Dangerous Conspiracy Theorist Doesn’t Believe Vaccines Work.”

Fauci’s comments on vaccines have been highly manipulative. “When polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75%,” Fauci said in December. “Then, when newer surveys said 60% or more would take it, I thought, ‘I can nudge this up a bit,’ so I went to 80, 85.” In other words, this isn’t science. It’s manipulating public opinion.

According to National Review’s Michael Brendan Dougherty, “The early data we have suggest very strongly that asymptomatic people are very weak transmitters of the disease. The data coming out of Israel, which is ahead of almost everyone in giving the top-shelf vaccines to its population, suggest that transmission basically stops among the vaccinated.”

So forgive our skepticism when Fauci advises that all this good news doesn’t mean we can begin to put this pandemic behind us this year. Certainly we should continue with precautions to protect the vulnerable, but it’s time to declare independence from the tyranny of nanny-staters like Fauci.

(Updated.)