Covid-19 vaccine STILL does not mean you can ‘eat and drink indoors’, Fauci says, prompting Rand Paul to call him a ‘petty tyrant’

White House health adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci is once again facing pushback after advising those who have been vaccinated against Covid-19 to still avoid normal activities, like eating and drinking indoors.

“Fauci continues to ignore 100 years of vaccine science,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) wrote about Fauci – with whom he has feuded before – in a Monday tweet slamming the infectious disease expert as a “petty tyrant.”

The comments came in response to a Sunday evening interview in which Fauci encouraged vaccinated individuals to continue taking precautions and not resuming normal activities just yet.

Asked if eating and drinking inside restaurants and bars is “okay now,” Fauci replied in the negative.

“For the simple reason that the level of infection, the dynamic of infection in the community are still really disturbingly high,” he said. “Like just yesterday there were close to 80,000 new infections and we've been hanging around 60, 75,000.”

Even if vaccinated, individuals need to “remember that you still have to be careful and not get involved in crowded situations, particularly indoors where people are not wearing masks,” according to Fauci.

“His only real theme is ‘do what I say’ even when it makes no sense,” Paul, a physician before he entered the Senate, wrote about Fauci. “If you’ve recovered or been vaccinated - go about your life.  Eat, drink, work, open the schools.”

Fauci faced similar criticism from others on social media.

“I really cannot stress enough how harmful it is for Fauci to say that vaccinated people shouldn't eat indoors because infection rates are high. Regardless of his intent, this statement sends the explicit message that the vaccines are ineffective,” Tablet Magazine editor Noam Blum tweeted. 

“Fauci won’t let go of the fear. He can’t. That’s his brand,” conservative author Mike Cernovich added.

In his Sunday interview, Fauci claimed that those thinking the country has been victorious over Covid-19 are celebrating prematurely. That’s despite roughly 40 percent of adults in the country receiving at least one dose of a vaccine and multiple states beginning to roll back their pandemic-era restrictions on businesses. 

Fauci continued to caution even vaccinated individuals when speaking on Monday, saying that hundreds or even thousands of fully vaccinated people could face “breakthrough infections,” meaning getting infected with the very virus you have been vaccinated against.

“We see this with all vaccines, in clinical trials, in the real world,” Fauci said at a White House briefing. “No vaccine is 100 percent efficacious, or effective, which means that you will always see breakthrough infections, regardless of the efficacy of your vaccine.” 

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