Photo: Shutterstock
A meeting PresidentJoe Bidenheld Monday with the nation’s governors demonstrates the precautions still in place to protect him fromCOVID-19.
“We are at an inflection point,” Biden, 79, said in the East Room of the White House to kick off a meeting with the National Governor’s Association. “And we have an opportunity … America is one of those nations — I think the only nation — that’s come out of every crisis stronger than it went into the crisis. It’s not hyperbole. We have had a crisis. We’ve come out. We’ve been stronger. And I think that’s where we are again.”
An in-person gathering of governors plus staff and administration officials, including Vice PresidentKamala Harris, and members of the press is an indication that the U.S. is closer to getting back to normal.
But small details from the meeting show that the White House still has its guard up when it comes to COVID and the possibility of infection for its most important occupant — even if the president is fullyvaccinatedandboosted.
For example, Biden sat more than 10 feet from everyone else in the room, including members of his cabinet and the vice president,according to the Associated Press.
Shutterstock
He was also the only one given a glass of water, so no one else had any reason to remove their mask. Biden was the only person who spoke without one, in fact. And the AP reports that when a White House staffer showed up with a surgical mask, that person was given an N95 mask (which provides more robust protection) to put on.
There’s nothing unusual about taking extraordinary measures to protect a president. But the precautions reflect how the White House is trying — and, to critics, sometimes failing — to both still acknowledge the severity of the virus (particularly for the unvaccinated) while encouraging people to receive immunizations and resume parts of normal life.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki addressed the topic with reporters Monday, pointing out that the country is in the midst of a COVID surge.
“This is not the new normal — what we’re living in, in this moment,” she said. “And that’s important for the public to understand, because right now we’re seeing record hospitalizations. We are still living with a range of precautions that change how people live their lives.”
But the road to normal is not a straight line. As the country responded to new science and new variants, White House has responded in turn, likedistributing millions of free face masksacross the country in an effort to combat the latest surge of cases and the highly contagious omicron variant.
The administration’s embrace of mask and home-testing distribution has not totally satisfied detractors who say officials waited too long and spent too much time only focused on vaccines.
“We are in a very different place,” Psaki said during Monday’s press briefing. “I don’t think we see it as a disconnect [in the messaging] The president’s view is that right now we still need to keep our heads down and stay at it to fight what is still, you know, surging in parts of the country. But we do have the tools to get to a point where it does not disrupt our daily lives.”
Ahead of the 2020 election, there was a sharp contrast between Biden andDonald Trump’s campaigns. Then-President Trump was rarely seen in a mask, heldin-person rallies and mask-free gatheringsat the White House and gotseriously sick with COVID-19.
Then-candidate Biden stuck to federal guidelines, often opting for virtual events, masking and social distancing, even as Trump assailed him for retreating from the campaign trail.
source: people.com
