Coronavirus case spikes across the country put Democrats on the defensive about further COVID-19 restrictions now that President-elect Joe Biden finds himself in a similar situation as President Trump at the beginning of the pandemic.
“I’m not going to shut down the economy, period,” Biden said during a press conference Thursday. He added he did not think a national lockdown was necessary because “every region, every area, every community can be different.”
At a March 20 White House briefing, Trump was asked why he had not considered a national lockdown and responded, “I don’t think so. Essentially, you’ve done that in California, you’ve done that in New York. Those are really two hotbeds.”
He added, “Those are probably the two hottest of them all, in terms of hot spots. I don’t think so because you go out to the Midwest, you go out to other locations, and they’re watching it on television, but they don’t have the same problems. They don’t have, by any means, the same problem.”
Many states and cities issued their own stringent regulations that sprouted from suggestions from the White House Coronavirus Task Force and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The governors and mayors in the same states and major metropolitan areas that first imposed these regulations — New York, Michigan, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and California — began to reissue COVID-19 restrictions on their residents just weeks after lifting those same rules.
House Democrats defended their state officials’ decisions to reinvoke the regulations, which include banning indoor dining, using public gym facilities, mandating mask-wearing inside residences, and capping the number of people inside one’s home.
“I say, you lead by leading, and we’re going to have to see where we go, but our numbers are rising, and people are going to die. So we’ve gone a pause, and we’ll see if it works,” Michigan Democratic Rep. Debbie Dingell told the Washington Examiner.
“I never take my mask off. I don’t eat or drink in public. I only use the bathroom at home, and I don’t want to get it. So, you know, we’re trying to save lives,” Dingell said. “At the end of this, we’re trying to prevent community spread, and the way we prevent spread is to work together. And if everybody could just wear a damn mask instead of making it so political, we could save thousands of lives and not be having this discussion.”
Pennsylvania Democratic Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon said of Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf’s order that mandates all residents in her state to wear masks inside their private homes, “We’re in the middle of a pandemic, and everyone has to be very careful.”
However, some state officials have been caught violating their own rules, including California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, who was shown in a photograph recently dining with lobbyists at an expensive indoor restaurant in the Napa Valley. Philadelphia’s Mayor Jim Kenney, who banned indoor dining, was caught dining at an indoor restaurant in Maryland back in August.
Although patience and trust are wearing thin for many people, Democrats want to see certain COVID-19 regulations in place.
“Some of the state officials have a reckoning, but the regulations are necessary. That doesn’t mean we have to shut down the whole place,” New Jersey Democratic Rep. Bill Pascrell said.
“Everyone needs to remember what we’re trying to avoid here, which is our hospitals being overwhelmed and having to go to a version of combat medicine, which is making decisions and making decisions about who gets care and who doesn’t,” Michigan Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin told the Washington Examiner.
