CNN medical contributor Dr. Leana Wen on Monday’s “Inside Politics” said it was “upsetting” Republican governors were not allowing families to protect their children by opposing mask mandates during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
Wen said, “When we look at even compare today a month ago, we are at 900% the level of new infections compared to early July, and there’s no particular end in sight.”
She continued, “We really need indoor mask mandates. It’s really upsetting, I think, that in the places, the parts of the country that have the most surge, they’re the places that are least likely to be imposing vaccine requirements and masking requirements, too.”
Pointing at a map showing the current outbreaks, anchor John King said, “Florida is the highest, but you see Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama. There is zero, zero, zero dispute here. Where vaccinations are low, cases are higher, and if you look at that Florida number now, it jumps off the table at you.”
Wen said, “That’s the correlation that we’re seeing, and it makes scientific sense that in places where there isn’t a lot of immunity, that’s why the Delta variant is ripping through these communities. Again, I find it — I think a lot of us in public health are so frustrated that at this point, we now have the tools, but there are governors, leaders in these parts of the country saying we don’t want to use the tools at our disposal. In fact, we’re not even going to allow families to use these tools at their disposal to protect their children, and that’s extremely upsetting, especially because we know how dangerous this Delta variant is.”
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