Back in May, the CDC announced that fully vaccinated people no longer need to mask up in most scenarios but just two months later, it ordered Americans to put their masks back on regardless of vaccination status due to the threat of the COVID delta variant. President Joe Biden, who is an advocate for mask wearing and COVID vaccines, recently spoke out in what appeared to be a contradiction to the CDC's new mask mandate for vaccinated folks.
"In a significant part of the country, you wouldn't have to take one of these off, you don't have to put one on," President Biden said in the White House on Thursday, as reported by WND. "Like in my home state of Delaware, where I live in New Castle County, where I was yesterday in Pennsylvania-because people got vaccinated."
"They don't need a mask when the majority-the vast majority of people got vaccinated," the Democratic leader reasoned. He argued that the CDC recently announced a new mask mandate "n parts of the country where COVID cases are substantially high, where people didn't get vaccinated," saying that in those parts, the CDC "recommends you wear a mask when you're in public and indoors, like work or in a grocery store. That's true for both the vaccinated and unvaccinated."
President Biden added that regardless if one is fully vaccinated or not, one can "have the delta variant in your system and spread it to someone who isn't vaccinated."
A recent Politico/Morning Consult poll conducted between July 31 and August 2 sought to find out how the American public is receiving the mixed messaging from various departments of the government, including the White House and the CDC.
Results showed that among 2,200 adult respondents, 38% said they would "always" wear a mask in public indoor spaces after the new guidelines, the Miami Herald reported. Meanwhile, 20% of respondents say they would wear a mask "most of the time," while 18% said they would "sometimes" wear a mask. 11% said they would "rarely" wear a mask and 13% said they would never wear a mask.
The survey results showed that they were partisan as well, with 22% of Republicans saying that they would "always" wear a mask and 23% saying they would never wear one. Up to 51% of Democrats said they would "always" wear a mask versus 3% who said they would never wear one.
The survey also showed that most respondents supported local mask mandates, while 31% believed that such mask mandates should not be implemented by local officials. Meanwhile, 35% of mask mandate supporters said it should only be worn in indoor settings, versus 34% who said masks should be required for both indoor and outdoor settings.
Changing mask mandates by the CDC has also caused Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson to retract his stance on banning mask guidelines in the states, particularly in schools. Just months after he signed the bill banning state and local mask mandates, he reinstated the state's public health emergency and is calling for a special session to change the mask mandate law to allow schools to implement their own mask mandates, CBS News reported.
