Is the pandemic quietly ending?
With the world’s eyes fixed on the Ukraine crisis, the majority of the nation’s remaining masking mandates are set to end this week, that is, except for children under 5 in New York City, for some reason.
The Blaze recently broke down the major change.
In New York City on Monday, most indoor mask mandates and vaccine mandates ended, although children under 5 will still be required to wear masks. This is “bizarre” as The Blaze described it, since such young children are typically exempt from masking mandates.
“We’re far from out of the woods,” the city’s Mayor Eric Adams noted last week when announcing the rollback. “COVID is still here. But we are beating it back.”
The cities of Boston, Los Angeles, and Minnesota’s Twin Cities all rolled back their masking mandates as well, while the state of Maryland’s requirement for masks in government buildings has been lifted as well.
Major universities also appear to be following suit, with the University of Michigan and state universities in Oregon where previous pandemic measures were notably stringent have also lifted their campus masking requirements.
The Blaze notes that governments and officials are pointing to the latest advisories on masking from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), but that critics also point out that no new research on the efficacy of masking in the prevention of the spread of COVID-19 has been released.
Among political pundits, many have speculated that the quiet rollback of previously strict pandemic response measures in Democratic strongholds has more to do with the approaching November midterm elections and the public’s growing fatigue with mask and vaccine mandates than it does with the latest health research.
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