Anthony Fauci now says American travelers should expect masks forever on commercial air travel. Apparently getting triple vaxxed – or even a fourth jab (discussions are already underway) – is not enough. So when it comes to masks and air travel, Fauci is clearly signaling there will be no end.

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director, who has come to be hailed as a national hero by Liberals who simplistically like to repeat the mantra “trust the science” told ABC’s This Week in a recent interview that removing masks on an airplane is “not something we should even be considering.”

Dr. Fauci was responding to a question from show host Jonathan Karl who asked whether there should be a vaccine mandate in place for all domestic air travel.

“We want to make sure people keep their masks on. I think the idea of taking masks off, in my mind, is really not something we should even be considering,” Fauci said.

That’s when Karl responded: “And of course, the airline CEOs were suggesting that — you know, that we may not — may no longer need a mask. I hear you loud and clearly, you disagree with that on an — on the airplane.” The ABC anchor was referencing the following:

During a U.S. Senate panel hearing on Dec. 15, Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly said that masks “don’t add much, if anything” to fight the spread of COVID-19 on airplanes.

As to the original question, Fauci suggested that a vaccine mandate for air travel is something that should be looked at and considered:

“A vaccine requirement for a person getting on the plane is just another level of getting people to have a mechanism that would spur them to get vaccinated; namely, you can’t get on a plane unless you’re vaccinated, which is just another one of the ways of getting requirements, whatever that might be,” Fauci said.

Interestingly, he doesn’t actually directly address that the vaccine would actually prevent infection if there’s contact with a Covid-19 positive person in an airport on an aircraft; instead, he touts the possibility as but another “mechanism” that would “spur” people to get vaccinated.

Or to translate: Fauci wants to use the removal of individual freedoms to put people in a position to have to “accept” the mandate before getting their prior freedoms back.

In the segment Fauci had also followed up with, “So I mean, anything that could get people more vaccinated would be welcome. But with regard to the spread of virus in the country, I mean, I think if you look at wearing a mask and the filtration on planes, things are reasonably safe,” he added, again emphasizing that he sees mask-wearing aboard flights as fundamentally a tool of coercion, and not a matter of “safety” per se.

Fauci’s recent comments went viral online, at a moment thousands of Christmas holiday flights were canceled across the nation as the Omicron variant took many airline crews out of commission, resulting in miserable holidays for people stranded at the airport. Given that flight crews are likely mostly vaccinated, it’s also most likely that many of the attendants that called in sick were already fully vaccinated, with the jab doing little to actually prevent infection, which is what a vaccine is supposed to do by definition.