{"id":17797,"date":"2023-09-14T06:53:57","date_gmt":"2023-09-14T11:53:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=17797"},"modified":"2023-09-14T06:54:00","modified_gmt":"2023-09-14T11:54:00","slug":"theres-no-sign-of-widespread-covid-19-mandates-in-the-us-republicans-are-warning-of-them-anyway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=17797","title":{"rendered":"There\u2019s no sign of widespread COVID-19 mandates in the US. Republicans are warning of them anyway"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 As Americans fend off a\u00a0late summer COVID-19 spike\u00a0and prepare for a\u00a0fresh vaccine rollout, Republicans are raising familiar fears that government-issued lockdowns and mask mandates are next.
It\u2019s been a favorite topic among some of the GOP\u2019s top presidential contenders. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis told reporters that\u00a0people are \u201clurching toward\u201d COVID-19 restrictions\u00a0and \u201cthere needs to be pushback.\u201d South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott posted online that the \u201cradical Left\u201d seeks to bring back school closures and mandates. And former President Donald Trump urged congressional Republicans to stop the Biden administration from bringing back COVID-19 \u201cmandates, lockdowns or restrictions of any kind.\u201d
\u201cThe radical Democrats are trying hard to restart COVID hysteria,\u201d Trump told supporters in Rapid City, South Dakota, during a recent campaign stop. \u201cI wonder why. Is there an election coming up by any chance?\u201d
While some individual schools and colleges have implemented temporary mask requirements, there is no sign that anyone in federal or state leadership is considering widespread COVID-19 restrictions, requirements or mask mandates. The administrations of several Democratic governors denied that any such moves are even under discussion. The overriding sentiment is to leave the decisions to individuals.
\u201cNo COVID-19 public health restrictions or mask requirements are being considered by the Murphy administration,\u201d said Christi Peace, spokesperson for New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy.
\u201cThere are no impending mass lockdowns or mask mandates for New Mexico,\u201d said Jodi McGinnis Porter, spokeswoman for the New Mexico Department of Public Health.
It was largely the same message from Democratic governors\u2019 offices in several other states that responded to an inquiry about whether any COVID-19 mandates were under consideration. That included Connecticut, Kansas, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan and Oregon.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, made clear his opposition to COVID-19 lockdowns as well as mask and vaccine mandates when he was campaigning for office last year: \u201cThis is an area where I think folks got it wrong,\u201d he said of school and business shutdowns. His office echoed the same sentiment in its response to the AP this week, saying, \u201cThe administration\u2019s view is that there is no need to impose restrictions.\u201d
In the two most populous Democratic-led states, California and New York, the state health departments recommend getting the updated vaccine, but have no requirements for the shot or mask wearing. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul was asked during a news conference Wednesday about whether she would consider mask or vaccine mandates: \u201cWe are in a place where we\u2019re seeing low numbers; not requiring such actions today,\u201d she said.
Elisabeth Shepard, spokesperson for Oregon\u2019s Democratic governor, Tina Kotek, noted that the federal public health emergency for the virus outbreak ended in May.
\u201cCurrently, COVID-19 lockdowns and mask mandates are not being discussed and the governor has no plans to institute these measures,\u201d she said.
Still, the misleading narrative has proven a convenient scare tactic for Republicans in their efforts to woo voters who see Democrats as oppressive leaders targeting their freedoms.
The GOP presidential hopefuls hammering this message in the last week join a chorus of conservative lawmakers and far-right pundits who have spent the last month warning that tyrannical COVID-19 measures are looming.
In August, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones claimed an anonymous \u201chigh-level manager in the TSA\u201d and an unnamed \u201cBorder Patrol-connected\u201d source told him that Transportation Security Administration workers would soon need to wear masks and that COVID-19 lockdowns would return in December.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said\u00a0the claims were \u201cutterly false,\u201d but they still were amplified by influential Republicans, including Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, who\u00a0posted on X\u00a0that she wrote to the TSA demanding answers.
Later last month, when a Black liberal arts college in Atlanta announced it had reinstated a temporary mask mandate in response to student infections, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican from Georgia, posted on X that \u201cAmericans have had enough COVID hysteria. WE WILL NOT COMPLY!\u201d
The school, Morris Brown College, has since lifted the requirement but is keeping in place other policies, including contact tracing and temperature checks on campus.
Some of the outcry from conservatives has been in response to President Joe Biden\u2019s comments last month on COVID-19\u2019s recent uptick, which has led to an increase in hospitalizations and deaths nationwide \u2014 though a fraction of what the country saw in past surges.
\u201cAs a matter of fact, I signed off this morning on a proposal we have to present to the Congress a request for additional funding for a new vaccine that is necessary \u2014 that works,\u201d Biden told reporters during a visit to South Lake Tahoe. \u201cAnd tentatively \u2014 not decided finally yet \u2014 tentatively, it is recommended that, it will likely be recommended that everybody get it no matter whether they\u2019ve gotten it before or not.\u201d
The CDC on Tuesday endorsed those new shots for everyone 6 months and older, and the vaccines will be available at pharmacies, health centers and some doctor offices as soon as this week.
Still, the Biden administration does not plan to implement any new vaccine or mask mandates, according to a White House official who requested anonymity to discuss the administration\u2019s thinking.
Reinstated mask requirements across the country have so far been limited to a handful of local schools and businesses. One example is a Maryland elementary school that required students who were exposed in a classroom\u2019s outbreak to wear masks at school for 10 days.
But these isolated measures have sparked outrage from conservatives who have used them to energize their supporters.
Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio last week unveiled the \u201cFreedom to Breathe Act,\u201d a bill that would block the federal government from imposing mask mandates for domestic flights, public transit and schools. His call for unanimous passage of the bill failed, with Democratic Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts calling it a \u201cred herring\u201d meant to deflect from the GOP\u2019s prioritization of \u201cgimmicks over people.\u201d
Greene, the Republican from Georgia, introduced a\u00a0companion bill in the House. She has said she won\u2019t vote to avoid a government shutdown unless the government ends coronavirus mandates, which have already largely been reversed.
Misinformation experts say there\u2019s a strategy to Republicans\u2019 foreboding claims about impending mandates: They remind voters of the negative feelings they had early in the pandemic \u2014 and associate those with Democrats.
\u201cWearing a mask doesn\u2019t have to be connected to anxiety, fear, anger and other strong emotions, but for many people it is,\u201d said Lisa Fazio, a Vanderbilt University psychology professor who studies the spread of false claims. \u201cNo one wants to go back to those feelings, so Republicans are trying to tie those negative feelings and memories to their political opponents.\u201d
Meanwhile, some of the Republican-led states where state leaders are railing against COVID-19 measures have been the hardest hit by the recent surge. Data shows Mississippi had the highest COVID-19 death rate per 10,000 people in the last week of August.
Early that week, the state\u2019s Republican governor, Tate Reeves, pledged to block any widespread restrictions, posting online that the state would \u201clive in self-determination, not top-down fear.\u201d
apnews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 As Americans fend off a\u00a0late summer COVID-19 spike\u00a0and prepare for a\u00a0fresh vaccine rollout, Republicans are raising familiar fears that government-issued lockdowns and mask mandates are next.It\u2019s been a favorite topic among some of the GOP\u2019s top presidential contenders. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis told reporters that\u00a0people are \u201clurching toward\u201d COVID-19 restrictions\u00a0and \u201cthere […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":17798,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1154],"tags":[22373,1580,20943,2229],"class_list":["post-17797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending","tag-covid-19-enforcement-measures","tag-republicans","tag-united-states","tag-warning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17797"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17797\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17799,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17797\/revisions\/17799"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}