Fauci touts vaccine boosters and masks after getting COVID-19 for the third time

Dr. Anthony Fauci , the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, recommended vaccine boosters and masking after he recently contracted COVID-19 again.

"I got infected about two weeks ago. It was my third COVID-19 infection, and I had been vaccinated and boosted a total of six times," Fauci said to MedPage Today Editor-in-Chief Dr. Jeremy Faust in a podcast episode posted on Saturday.

He added, "It was a very, very mild infection. I'm 83 years old. I would think that if I were naive immunologically, this thing could have killed me, but it didn't even make me significantly ill."

Fauci said he had some "sniffles, a little fever, and sinusitis" before it was over.

He told Faust that he "gets regularly boosted" and that under certain circumstances, he still wears a mask.

"I always wear a mask when I'm on a plane, particularly if I'm doing a five-hour flight to San Francisco or Los Angeles," Fauci said, adding that he often avoids crowded spaces.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) slammed Fauci as an "idiot."

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"And the world listened to this idiot during the pandemic? How many people died because he helped sabotage early treatment and promoted the vaccine as safe and effective?" Johnson wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, coronavirus still tends to peak in December and January while also rising in July and August. The current COVID-19 vaccines now target the KP.2 strain, a descendant of the highly contagious JN.1 variant that emerged last winter. World Health Organization officials said 84 countries are seeing a rise in positive COVID-19 tests over the last several weeks.