It’s always fun to listen to Lord Fauci try to explain something or answer a question in an understandable way. He talks a lot, but he doesn’t say much. Below, I attempt to decode what he was actually saying at today’s press conference.

Today, the COVID-19 Response Team held a press conference on the heels of President Biden’s Dark Winter Motivational Speech yesterday. Listen to our special episode of Community Guidelines in response to Biden’s speech. Spoiler alert: Not impressed:

The focus of the Response Team’s presentation today centered on the current state of things, treatment options available, and general fear mongering leading up to the holidays. At the end, they opened up the virtual meeting to questions from the press. There were a few key statements and answers to press questions from Dr. Fauci that I had to go back and listen to a few times.

Is Omicron less severe, and what does that mean?

Dr. Fauci: “Even if you have a diminution in severity, if you have a much larger number of individual cases, the fact that you have so many more cases, might actually obviate the effect of it being less severe. And that’s one of the reasons why the President in his remarks yesterday spoke about how we are going to supplement the capability of hospitals to respond to the possibility that there might be a run on the need for hospitalization.”

Translation: Infections with the Omicron variant of SARS-COV-2 do not produce as serious a disease as previous variants. This means you won’t get as sick as you may have with previous variants. But even though the disease and symptoms are not as severe, if we have a lot of cases, the healthcare system may be overwhelmed. It’s POSSIBLE that we MIGHT have more people who need to go to the hospital. So we are preparing for this.

Vaccinated people are still getting sick. Why?

Dr. Fauci: “Let’s talk about some of the immune evasion. We mentioned this in different briefings before. But just to reiterate: There’s no doubt that there’s a marked reduction in neutralizing activity against Omicron when you look at the 2-dose mRNA vaccines when you compare Omicron to earlier variants such as Delta. However, and here again why we emphasize the importance of booster shots. The anti-Omicron activity is about 20 to 40 fold higher in sera from boosted vaccinees versus the peak in the individuals who had the two-dose vaccine. This is validated by the clinical data, which shows that the vaccine efficacy, as we all know from previous studies of a symptomatic infection of a two-dose mRNA, wanes over time. However, there’s a moderate to high effectiveness, about 75%, seen in the early period after a booster dose, and very likely higher when it comes to hospitalization and and severe disease.”

Translation: It is well known that the protective effect of the two-dose vaccines wear off. Pretty quickly, actually. The two-dose vaccine series is not effective at preventing infection of the current dominant circulating variant (Omicron). If you get a booster dose, there seems to be a short early period of protection, but you still can get infected with SARS-COV-2 even with a booster dose. We don’t know how long the protection is even if you’re boosted. Bottom line: what we originally told you to do is not working. So we’re recommending that you do more of what we originally told you to do. Because that should work. Probably. We’re not sure.

Is the Omicron Variant a “Blessing in Disguise”?

Press Question: “A South Korean health official said ‘Omicron could be viewed as a signal of this pandemic nearing its end if it is proven to be more contagious but less deadly.’ I’m wondering in the context of the data that you presented from South Africa today, what is your view on that?”

Dr. Fauci: “Well I think that that’s, uh, a supposition that might, uh I…I would hate to say a ‘blessing in disguise’. I’ve never thought of a virus ever that can infect and kill people to be a ‘blessing’ in any way. Uh, but if you’re talking about would it be preferable to have Omicron be totally pervasive and be relatively low degree of severity, yes. Obviously that would be preferable, but it’s dangerous business to be able to rely on what you perceive as a lower degree of severity. Having said that, it is conceivable that if Omicron takes over, and you get a good immune response to Omicron, and you do not wind up getting severity as much as with Delta, that we could wind up with a virus that’s pervasive that does not cause severity and that people would get enough immune response to that you would then wind up having a lesser degree of morbidity and mortality. That is conceivable, but you don’t wanna count on it. You can’t count on anything when you’re dealing with a virus that has fooled us so many times before.”

Translation: Yes, it would be incredible if the Omicron variant were more infectious but less deadly. But it’s dangerous to rely on what you interpret as “less severe”. Only I am allowed to decide what is severe, and what is not severe. It’s very possible that this new variant will be less deadly. But we don’t know, and we don’t want that idea circulating. Because we don’t know what we’re doing, and until we know what we’re doing with this pandemic, you’re just gonna have to trust us and do what we say. I am a fool, but I am also science. Trust me.

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I have a healthy distrust of anyone who can never quite answer a question. Dr. Fauci strikes me as just such a person. It’s dangerous business when a person like that wields so much power. If you want to dive deeper into the fruits of Fauci’s labor over the years, I would highly recommend picking up a copy of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s new book: The Real Anthony Fauci. We dug into this book in a podcast episode as well: