Democratic governors are leaving President Biden behind as they lift mask mandates in their states.
Governors in New Jersey, Connecticut, Oregon, California, and Biden’s home state Delaware have recently announced that they will be lifting mask restrictions in their respective states, with other blue states New York and Illinois expected to follow soon.
“People are sick to death of this pandemic,” said Representative Sean Patrick Maloney of New York and head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “And I do believe, because of the president’s leadership and the Democratic plan to beat the virus, that we will be in a position to communicate a clear off-ramp.”
CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky spoke out against the governors’ decisions, saying that “now is not the moment” to drop mask mandates despite the decreasing effect of the COVID-19 Omicron variant.
According to Politico, bipartisan governors meeting with President Biden have expressed their desire to move on from the pandemic and “return to a greater state of normality.”
Support for mask and vaccine mandates have been declining, with 70% of Americans agreeing that “it’s time we accept that COVID is here to stay, and we just need to get on with our lives,” according to a recent survey by Monmouth University.
For instance, 10 out of 21 Democratic senators in Virginia joined Republicans on Tuesday in passing a bill that would allow parents to reject mask mandates in schools by July.
“In an overwhelming bipartisan show of support, the Senate of Virginia took a significant step today for parents and children,'” Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin of Virginia said in a statement. “I applaud Sen. [Chap] Petersen’s amendment to give parents the right to decide whether their children should wear masks in schools. In the last week, we have seen Democrat-led states like Oregon, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Delaware move away from universal mask mandates in schools.”
Many high-profile scientific writers have also begun backing the relaxing of mask mandates, according to a Politico report.
“Times have changed. Cases are falling rapidly. Vaccines are widely available for everyone 5 and older, and they work: People vaccinated and boosted are 97 times less likely to die of COVID-19 compared with the unvaccinated,” wrote Leana Wen, a public health professor at George Washington University and the former health commissioner of Baltimore.
