President Joe Biden is struggling to keep his promise to follow the science on the coronavirus pandemic response, wearing a mask outside in contradiction to his own government’s latest guidance.
A fully vaccinated Biden has continued in recent days to wear a mask indoors and outdoors. That is despite the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, the country’s premier public health agency, finding people inoculated against COVID-19 who leave their faces uncovered are at low risk unless they are in large groups.
The revised guidelines, unlike others from the Trump and Biden administrations, were clear. Yet, Biden’s decision to keep masking up and the range of explanations about why have gifted Republicans with more material to lambast him with claims he is doing little more than virtue-signaling as the politicization of mask-wearing heats up as the country inches toward normality.
Anita Dunn, a White House senior aide, this weekend suggested the president still dons his face covering outside due to “habit.” But just days before, her boss’s own explanation was he did so out of a “patriotic responsibility” to lead by example. The president also risks sending a signal that the coronavirus vaccines he almost daily urges people to take are subpar.
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Biden’s mask messaging is “so far one of the bigger failures” of his administration, according to Republican strategist Susan Del Percio. He has not articulated what is “acceptable” behavior regarding face coverings as coronavirus restrictions ease around the country, she explained.
“If the president wants to wear a mask, or first lady Jill Biden, or even House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Kamala Harris at the address to Congress, just say we’re doing it to send a message,” Del Percio told the Washington Examiner.
“That is a clear way of showing that you still want to support mask-wearing where appropriate and send a message that, you know, you do need to wear a mask at times,” she said.
As scientists learn more about the coronavirus thanks to an expanding bank of data, the CDC has modified its guidelines. The agency, for instance, recently changed its recommendations concerning social distancing in schools. It had earlier upset teachers with its position that educators did not need to be vaccinated against COVID-19 to return safely to in-person instruction in their classrooms.
“Since COVID came to our shores, we’ve been adjusting, and we can continue to adjust. But we have to stay focused on one message. We have to follow the science,” Del Percio said. “If there’s an exception to it for reasons of good public messaging from the president, he should say why he’s doing it and it should be clear.”
Aggressive Progressive podcast host Christopher Hahn dismissed Republican criticism over Biden’s mask-wearing as “gotcha politics” and instead urged the GOP to encourage its voters to get their coronavirus vaccines when it is their turn. The former Democratic consultant referred to figures that indicate high hesitancy among conservative men to roll up their sleeves.
“I’m not saying they shouldn’t question things, have legitimate questions answered. But they shouldn’t be making things up just for the sake of ratings and clicks,” he said.
But Hahn also implored Biden to hone his message around shots so that upward of 70% of the population will get their jabs and the country can reach herd immunity. He suggested setting a goal and publicizing it so the rate outpaces the spread of the variants.
“It’s a difficult messaging issue because it’s like a tightrope, right? We can see the light at the end of the tunnel, but there’s still danger between here and there,” he said.
The Bipartisan Policy Center’s chief medical adviser, Anand Parekh, recommends Biden keep his messaging simple.
“While this new guidance will be welcome to many, it’s fair to say that some people might take time to adjust to the new guidance,” he said. “We just need to keep supporting one another through this process of renormalizing.”
The CDC relaxed its guidance last week so that vaccinated people can now be inside and outside with other immunized people without a mask, “except in certain crowded settings and venues.”
Just before the announcement, Biden had been mocked after he was photographed wearing a mask during his virtual Leaders Summit on Climate, while his foreign leader counterparts, including Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, were not.
Biden was “sending a message to the world” about coronavirus precautions by covering his face, according to White House press secretary Jen Psaki.
“I don’t know what setups they all had in their countries, that may warrant some more reporting or not. But obviously, he had a pool there for portions, there were additional staff there, additional personnel, and that’s the sort of model that we try to keep ourselves to here,” Psaki told reporters last week.
Then, after the announcement on April 27, Biden was asked what message he was sending by wearing a mask to a podium placed on the White House North Lawn for him to deliver remarks on the pandemic.
“By watching me take it off and not putting it back on until I get back inside,” he told reporters.
But in an interview after his joint address to Congress later that week, Biden said he would continue wearing a mask outdoors because the likelihood of him being in public and people not approaching him was “not very high.”
“You and I took our masks off when I came in because look at the distance we are,” Biden told the NBC reporter during the sit-down. “But if we were, in fact, sitting there talking to one another close, I’d have my mask on, and I bet you’d have a mask on, even though we’ve both been vaccinated.”
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Although Pelosi and Harris wore masks during Biden’s address to Congress under the House physician’s direction, Biden’s support for face coverings was a wedge issue between him and former President Donald Trump in the lead-up to the 2020 election. He even toyed with the idea of a mask mandate on the campaign trail before settling on a “100-day mask challenge” regulating federal property once he was in office.
Both older men whose age and health placed them at higher risk of dying from the coronavirus before their vaccinations, Biden followed cautious public health experts who advised him to wear a mask. In contrast, Trump bucked the doctors.
While Biden wore two masks, citing the uncomfortable way N95 respirators sit on the face, Trump famously ripped his off on the White House South Portico after being hospitalized for three days at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. There, he had experimental treatments, steroids, and supplemental oxygen for his positive COVID-19 diagnosis.
