But while President Biden has approached the pandemic in a very different way than President Trump, he, too, has made a series of choices that set the stage for his own infection. If the overarching theme of Trump’s approach to COVID was to shut his eyes and hope the pandemic couldn’t see him if he couldn’t see it, the overarching theme of Biden’s approach has been to frame a collective disaster as just another matter of personal responsibility.
The administration thought it had a silver bullet, going so far as to declare that July 4, 2021, would be a celebration of freedom from COVID. They were so certain that individual vaccinations would be enough that they rolled back federal mask mandates in May 2021 under the assumption that if you did the right thing and got vaccinated, then you’d be fine. Even as delta, omicron, and multiple omicronlets proved this theory wrong, Biden’s policy has continued to focus mainly on getting more Americans vaccinated and boosted. Other policy options that could prevent spread — ventilation requirements, reliable data collection on case numbers, masking during periods of high transmission, getting vaccines to other countries where the virus still spreads unchecked — have largely been left to wither.
How is this reasonable? It's just more zero covid fanatic nonsense. Imagine still arguing for mask mandates at this point. And I'm not even going to get into the multiple paragraphs arguing that Biden "deserved" to get covid or suggesting that he and Trump were equally bad on covid.
Funny you say this, because there are still mask mandates at national parks and other federal buildings. As far as I know there's no real political pressure to end these. Don't expect it to end any time soon, especially since the trigger metrics are based entirely on cases.
Los Angeles County has a lower positivity rate than Fairfax County, VA. Guess which one is on the verge of a MASK mandate?
When I went to Arches National Park a few weeks back I tried to enter the visitor center and they would not let me in without a MASK. But I did see a group of people with California plates wear CLOTH masks OUTSIDE. Talk about useless.
