The White House press secretary had to ‘shake hands’ when asked about the blatantly political timing of the dropping of mask mandates ahead of President Biden’s State of the Union address. Look:
“Was it important to the President that the masks come off during…before the State of the Union? asked a reporter. “Is there a message he hopes to send, with, you know, with this news?”
“Well, I would say the president is very powerful, but he couldn’t get us to be in the green zone that we’re in right now in DC,” she claimed. “That’s why we won’t be… obligated to wear masks from tomorrow.”
You’re right: literally on the same day as the State of the Union address, the mask mandate for the Capitol building is dropped.
“Capitol’s attending physician says in new guidelines that masks are now optional on Capitol Hill, just in time for President Joe Biden’s first state of the union address,” said CNN reporter Daniella Diaz. . tweeted on Sunday.
So I would say for him it had nothing to do with the timing around the state of the union,” Jen Psaki said with a wry smile. “He wanted to give the CDC time to assess and make recommendations that would be clear to the American public about what their mask-wearing recommendations would be. Moving forward,” she said.
On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention changed its mask guidelines, prompting governors of blue states across the United States to lift their restrictions on masks. Many of the staunchest advocates of masks and mandates have followed suit: New York, California, Washington and Oregon have all dropped their mandates.
While the CDC justified the decision based on “low levels of transmission” in most of the country, the truth is that the masks have never been shown to have made a statistically significant difference in stopping the disease. spread. Indeed, mask-mandated states had consistently higher case rates than free states, while mask-mandated schools consistently had higher case rates than mask-optional schools.
The mask guidelines were changed just days before President Biden’s State of the Union address and amid a Russian invasion of Ukraine that provided a useful distraction for an imploding administration. Republicans are also poised to impose a historic bloodbath on Democrats midterm in 2022.
On Feb. 24, a memo from IMPACT Research began circulating a day before the CDC’s guidance change that outlines the sudden political decision by Democrats to drop the masks. The only “science” the CDC tracked was “political science.”
NOW READ:
Read the memo that freaked out the CDC and Democrats by dropping mask mandates
OPINION: This article contains comments that reflect the opinion of the author.