Keller @ Large: With the public tired of COVID, politicians are easing restrictions
BOSTON - From Capitol Hill - where lawmakers are poised to drop the vaccine mandate for military members - to China - where officials are relaxing some of the world's toughest quarantine rules - the tide is turning against COVID-19 restrictions.
What a difference a year makes. The headlines at this time last year: "A lot of uncertainty" about the pandemic, with "Holiday plans derailed" amid forecasts of a "surge" in threat and risk.
But despite fresh predictions of a new, more vaccine-resistant COVID surge, maskless crowds are everywhere, visual confirmation of a new national poll's findings that, for most, COVID concerns are in the rearview mirror.
Half of Americans say they have returned to their pre-COVID behaviors. And when asked if it's time to stop fighting the virus and move on, 72% of Republicans said yes, seconded by nearly half of independents, while most Democrats remain cautious.
But it was a Democratic President Joe Biden who said "the pandemic is over" a few months ago. And from Gov. Charlie Baker to Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, once-vocal advocates for COVID mitigation measures seem in retreat from public opinion.
"They're listening more to the anti-maskers and the anti-vaccine [voices]," says Suleika Soto, an activist with the Boston Education Justice Alliance and co-founder of BPS Families for COVID Safety.
She cites a recent study by the New England Journal of Medicine that found Boston's decision to extend masking requirements after much of the state dropped them resulted in few infections in the Boston schools. But in a recent meeting with school and city officials, Soto says she was told "the data doesnt say that we should be implenting masking...despite the New England Journal of Medicine coming out and the prediction that there's gonna be [more] COVID cases."
What's going on?
"I think people are just tired of COVID," says Soto. "And I feel like the political leaders and decision-makers are really playing into that narrative that COVID is over."
The Boston Public Schools are holding vaccination clinics in the schools and distributing masks to students, and the city's website says they will require masking "when COVID-19 levels are high as designated by the CDC guidelines."
How much are these decisions affected by politics?
It says right in the Declaration of Independence that government draws its power "from the consent of the governed." Pandemic lockdowns and mask mandates were widely supported early on, but that tide has changed.
And our political leaders are reacting to that, for better or worse.