Dr. Anthony Fauci’s penchant toward lockdowns and Bubble Wrap has turned out to be wrong several times throughout the pandemic, with it sometimes being clear he was wrong the moment he made an assertion. But that hasn’t stopped him from trying to orient normal life around COVID-19 yet.

The latest example comes from three doctors, Elizabeth Plummer, Marty Makary, and Ge Bai. They examined the COVID case numbers for the counties with football teams in the Southeastern Conference Conference. SEC schools in Louisiana, Florida, Tennessee, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, Texas, Missouri, and Kentucky started the 2021 season with large crowds and little-to-no restrictions.

Fauci had said that “I don’t think it’s smart,” and agreed with fellow COVID panic pundit Joy Reid that COVID-19 would “feast” on the large crowds. Plummer, Makary, and Bai determined no such feasting occurred and that the massive crowds and tailgates did not lead to case increases. As the three of them note, “Vaccination and natural immunity downgrade COVID-19 to an endemic mild virus.”

Fauci being wrong is not surprising. It is fairly easy to be wrong making COVID predictions, even when you claim to “represent science.” The reason this is so egregious is that Fauci let his safetyism and his obsession with disrupting normal life because of COVID dictate his prediction when we already had evidence his claim would be wrong.

A study released back in February determined college football and NFL crowds did not worsen the spread of COVID. (The three doctors cite a similar study released in October that supports this conclusion). We also saw that Super Bowl LV in Tampa Bay, Florida, along with the parties and post-game celebrations, did not lead to a surge in local cases two weeks later.

In other words, Fauci had evidence his claim would be wrong seven months before he made it. So how did the oracle of science miss that?

Even if you think that Fauci is a sincere adviser and not a self-important bureaucrat who loves the camera, the fact is that he views COVID as the only thing that matters and, therefore, urges maximum safety (and thus isolation and restrictions) to solve it.

That’s why Fauci, after getting vaccinated, said in April he wouldn’t eat indoors or go to a movie theater (and implied this was his advice for the public). That’s why he recently said you should have vaccine passports for family members coming over for Christmas. That’s why he has promised the definition of “fully vaccinated” is going to change to leave out those who don’t get booster shots, which will affect employment mandates. All that matters to Fauci is COVID, which means any disruption in normal life, no matter how major, is necessary in his eyes.

At best, this safetyism was helpful at the onset of the pandemic when protecting the elderly (though Fauci praised New York amid its nursing home scandal). But his act wore thin long ago, and now that vaccines have been readily available for months and many people have natural immunity, his constant warnings about living life have gone from stale to obnoxious to downright embarrassing.