Last updated on May 18th, 2021 at 08:28 pm
“Fox and Friends” co-host Steve Doocy claimed that the new guidance from the Centers for Disease and Control and Prevention (CDC) new guidance lifting the mask mandate on fully vaccinated people was designed to take attention away from the migrants at the United States‘s southern border, in addition to “inflation” and “gas lines.”
Last week, the CDC announced that “Fully vaccinated people can resume activities without wearing a mask or physically distancing, except where required by federal, state, local, tribal, or territorial laws, rules, and regulations, including local business and workplace guidance.”
“It is all political,” Doocy said. “It is why the CDC, I know the [Biden] administration says it was not political why the CDC changed their guidance, but when you look at all the bad news the administration was facing. The gas lines, the inflation, the crisis at the southern border, all sorts of stuff, all at the same time. And so they say, ‘Oh, the CDC, they looked at the science.'”
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Doocy went on to call the adjustment “a political calculation” in response to “the myriad of bad news” to bolster the chances of Democrats retaining or expanding their majority in Congress.
You can hear Doocy’s remarks in the video below.
Steve Doocy says the CDC changing COVID-19 guidance "was a political calculation" to distract Americans from gasoline lines, inflation, and the southern border. pic.twitter.com/qsw5NSzaih
— Bobby Lewis (@revrrlewis) May 17, 2021
There is no evidence that the decision was politicized.
The decision was based on science showing that vaccines are remarkably effective at protecting individuals from getting infected with Covid-19, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky told NPR on Thursday. Â
“That science, in conjunction with all of the epidemiologic data that we have, really says now is the moment,” she said at the time.
In response to a question about whether continued rules and regulations are “relevant,” Walensky said that citizens “need to sort of also understand that many of these policies are going to be held at the jurisdictional level, at the locality level.”
“And, in fact, I think it’s really important for people to understand that if you are not vaccinated, you remain at risk unless you get vaccinated or continue to wear your mask. I would say now is the time to get vaccinated,” she added. “But importantly, I think it’s really important to understand at a jurisdictional level, how is your jurisdiction doing? The whole country is not a homogeneous space.”
Alan is a writer, editor, and news junkie based in New York.
