'Don't sit there in your white coat and tell me "just do what we say"': Bill Maher takes aim at Dr. Fauci as he urges Americans not to blindly follow advice of doctors

• Bill Maher is pushing back against those who are blindly following the COVID-19 advice of Dr. Fauci and other doctors
• 'Don't sit there in your white coat and tell me "just do what we say,"' Maher told Deadline in an interview on Friday 
• The politically-minded comedian made the comments the same day as the comedian's 20th season debut of his hit HBO series Real Time with Bill Maher
• The comedian's comments to medical community's response to the coronavirus come after the virus has claimed more than 860,000 deaths since 2020 
• The 66-year-old comedian, who tested positive for COVID-19 last May, added that the thus far, medical experts have been wrong about 'a lot' over the years 
• Data from the CDC shows that the virus has spiked significantly nationwide in recent months, despite advice from Fauci and fellow medical experts

HBO talk show host Bill Maher took aim at Anthony Fauci and other medical experts over their ever-changing COVID guidance during the pandemic.

'Don't sit there in your white coat and tell me "just do what we say,"' Maher told Deadline in an interview on Friday of the medical community's response to the coronavirus, which has claimed more than 860,000 lives since 2020.

'That's not a criticism of them like they're being corrupt, although there certainly is plenty of corruption in the medical establishment,' said the politically-minded comedian, who kicked off the 20th season of his hit HBO series Real Time with Bill Maher on Friday. 

Maher did not express much confidence when asked if he felt that the medical establishment, or Dr. Fauci - the Chief Medical Advisor to the President of United States and nation's leading infectious disease doctor - 'really know what they are doing.' 

'But I've always maintained that the big overarching theme should be that people look back and say, "Oh, look how far we've come medically."' 

'Yes, that's true. We're not putting wooden teeth in our mouth like in the George Washington era, and of course we have antibiotics and lots of vaccines and lots of other things that have been miraculous.'

'But in general, we still don't understand too much about how the human body works,' Maher said.

Maher said that the virus is a still a 'dominant issue' in our lives right now despite the advice from Fauci and fellow medical experts, and shouldn't be such an issue anymore.

'I feel like Covid is still the dominant issue of our lives right now and it should not be anymore,' said Maher before kicking off his show's 20th season Friday. 

The 66-year-old comedian, who tested positive for COVID-19 last May, added that the thus far, medical experts have been wrong about 'a lot' over the years.  

'They drilled mercury into my teeth when I was a child. Now, of course, we don't do that anymore, but do you really think in 50 years people will look back and say, "Oh, yeah, we had it all figured out in 2022?" No, they will be appalled at things we're doing right now.'  

Despite the ongoing spread of the virus and emerging variants such as the Delta and Omicron strains, Maher told Deadline that he was 'never scared' of the pandemic.

'I was always scared of the reaction to it, and as this has played out that only proved to be more true for me,' he said.

'It was never that virulent a threat, I thought, to people who were in good health,' he continued.

'Now, some people can’t help that they're not in good health. We should, of course, protect the vulnerable, but it was mostly a disease of the very old, which every disease is a threat to, and people who have comorbidities, which mostly is due to lifestyle.'

Meanwhile, Maher did commend the success of the coronavirus vaccine, however he added that while it does prevent one from dying, it does not stop the transmission of the virus.

'They just prevent you from dying, which is a great part of it, let's not undercount that.'

'But if they don't prevent you from transmitting it and they don't prevent you from getting it why are we still treating this disease the way we always have?' 

One of Maher's first guest for Friday's premiere episode of Real Time's 20th season, journalist and author Bari Weiss, shared much of the comedian's viewpoints on the pandemic and said that life must return to normal.

The Substack journalist blasted school closures and restrictions brought on during the pandemic as a 'catastrophic moral crime,' and declared that she is 'done with covid!'

'We were told you get the vaccine, you get the vaccine and you get back to normal. And we haven't gotten back to normal. And it's ridiculous at this point,' Weiss began on the HBO show.

Meanwhile, liberal Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor incorrectly claimed during a hearing last week on President Biden's vaccine mandate that 100,000 children in the U.S. with Covid-19 are in 'serious condition.'

The justice, appointed by former President Obama, also claimed that Omicron is 'just as deadly' as the Delta variant for the unvaccinated.

Studies have shown the Omicron variant to be more infectious but less virulent than past strains of Covid-19.

It also forced CDC Director Rochelle Walensky to correct Sotomayor's numbers claim during a segment of Fox News Sunday.

'The number is not 100,000. It's roughly 3500 in hospitals now?' asked host Bret Baier.

'Yes - while pediatric hospitalizations are rising, they're still about 15 fold less than hospitalizations of our older age or age demographic,' Walinsky stated.