New York is lifting its mask mandate for vaccinated people in most locations on Wednesday. It will join New Jersey and Connecticut in easing the bulk of its remaining COVID-19 restrictions on businesses the same day. Massachusetts will follow suit on May 29.
With vaccination rates rising, blue states are gradually embracing masklessness and reopening, in accordance with revised guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that were issued last week. “We have to get back to life and living — and we have to do it the way New Yorkers do it,” Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced from an empty Radio City Music Hall.
There’s just one problem — will rank-and-file liberal voters in these states go along?
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Polling showed throughout the pandemic that liberals and Democrats were more worried about the virus. A Quinnipiac poll taken last March as the outbreak was beginning found that two-thirds of Democratic voters were concerned about the coronavirus disrupting their lives, while nearly 6 in 10 Republicans said the opposite.
An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll conducted around the same time found 68% of Democrats were fearful of someone in their family contracting the coronavirus, compared to 40% of Republicans and 45% of independents. The partisan divide on many COVID-related issues has persisted over time, according to a year of surveys by the Pew Research Center.
The New York Times reported on vaccinated people who refuse to take off their masks despite the new guidance. The newspaper quoted one woman as saying, “Even if I’m the only person on planet Earth that continues to wear the mask, if that’s what makes me feel comfortable, I’ll wear the mask.”
For some, it is about not wearing makeup or protecting from other future variants of the virus. But ideology is also a factor.
“Lurking among the jubilant Americans venturing back out to bars and planning their summer-wedding travel is a different group: liberals who aren’t quite ready to let go of pandemic restrictions,” Emma Green wrote in an Atlantic story headlined “The Liberals Who Can’t Quit the Lockdown.”
It’s a position common among liberal influencers in the media. “I feel like I’m going to have to rewire myself so that when I see someone out in the world who’s not wearing a mask, I don’t instantly think, ‘You’re a threat,’” MSNBC host Rachel Maddow told her audience. “Or you are selfish, or you are a COVID denier, and you definitely haven’t been vaccinated.”
Liberal pundit Keith Olbermann tweeted at a libertarian journalist who criticized “performative” mask-wearing in public, writing: “You do realize, Mr. Dips—, that we still haven’t confirmed that the vaccinated can’t carry the disease asymptomatically. We are doing the ‘performative act’ to save your worthless ass.” Olbermann alleged via hashtag that the journalist was a “fascist.”
President Joe Biden was photographed Tuesday conversing with two Democratic congresswomen wearing masks outdoors despite the updated guidance. He has frequently worn masks despite being vaccinated. When Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican face of COVID reopening, lifted his state’s mask mandate in early March, Biden chastised him for “Neanderthal thinking.” Within two months, however, Texas reported zero COVID deaths.
Masks, in particular, have long been a political and cultural flashpoint as the pandemic raged. While liberal cities like Brookline, Massachusetts, have voted to keep their mask mandates going against CDC recommendations, conservatives have often argued against the face coverings. “Masks are oppressive and nothing but a political tool,” tweeted Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican, on Tuesday. “End the oppression!” She added the hashtag #FreeYourFace.
But after a year of embracing Anthony Fauci as a secular saint and treating CDC guidelines as holy writ, some on the Left have begun to resemble traditionalist pre-Vatican II CDC guideline adherents as those recommendations have evolved in the direction of greater openness with improved vaccination rates.
“For the last year, anyone questioning let alone rejecting CDC/WHO guidance on COVID was vilified as an anti-science crank, to the point of being censored off the internet,” tweeted heterodox liberal Glenn Greenwald. “Yet it’s now totally common for liberals with no scientific training to go on TV & reject new CDC guidance.” He included a clip from MSNBC.
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Confidence in Biden’s pandemic management, a major issue that contributed to his defeat of former President Donald Trump last year, could calm liberal fears, some Democratic insiders say, as well as blue-state leaders joining the reopening rather than Republicans such as Abbott and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
“Liberals were more risk-averse during the days of the pandemic. But they will accept the removal of mask mandates and now feel more relaxed like everyone else,” said Democratic strategist Brad Bannon. “Progressives may continue to wear their masks, but they are spending more time in public places. The calendar will ease the way to school reopenings. The school year is about to end, and by fall, progressives will be ready for the reopening of schools if the pandemic continues to abate.”
