President Joe Biden is asking local and states leaders to stop or slow down businesses and institutions from reopening and add or reinstitute restrictions.
Despite the president’s push to have 90% of American adults be eligible for vaccination by April 19, Biden wants cities and states to “maintain and reinstate the mask mandate,” The Baltimore Sun reported.
As The Sun reported, the Biden administration
believes that too many Americans are overlooking the severity of COVID-19 and the importance of wearing a mask, calling it the “impending doom.”Before Biden’s White House health briefing, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, went off script and shared her frustration with those enabling others to not wear their masks.
“We have so much to look forward
to, so much promise and potential of where we are and so much reason for hope,” Walensky said. “But right now, I’m scared. I’m going to reflect on the recurring feeling I have of impending doom. I have to share the truth, and I have to hope and trust you will listen,” she said.According to the director, there was a 10% increase in cases from the previous week, which is about 60,000 cases per day.
Biden’s plea for help, which he said is not about politics, comes at a time where some Republican governors like Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves have lifted their states mask mandates.
On March 3, Biden called both governors out for being “neanderthals,” Forbes reported.
“We do know that there is a segment of the population that is concerned that the government will play too heavy-handed of a role in monitoring their vaccinations,” White House COVID-19 adviser Andy Slavitt said.
Slavitt said that the anti-mask movement “would discourage people” from getting vaccinated and that if the federal government has to step in to counter its claims.