America's Talking - Episode 8: New CDC guidance could revive mask mandates and COVID restrictions

Episode Date: July 30, 2021

President Joe Biden on Thursday said his administration will require all federal employees and contractors to show proof of vaccination, a move met with swift opposition from Texas elected officials. Federal workers or contractors who can’t show a proof of vaccination will be required to wear masks, practice physical distancing, and be subject to twice-weekly COVID-19 tests under the new rules. Biden encouraged the private sector and professional sports leagues to follow suit in an address on Thursday. Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/america-in-focus/support Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to America in Focus, powered by thecenter Square.com. I'm Johns Pataro, and this is the 30th week of 2021. Coming up, we'll take a quick look at one of the top stories from thecenter square.com. And later, executive editor of the center square, Dan McAulip, and DC reporter Casey Harper, will take a deeper dive into some of the top stories of the week, including the return of mask mandates and mitigation efforts thanks to new CDC guidance. newly released data showing the U.S. economy is behind schedule and the latest on immigration as migrants continue to head towards the southern border. Coming up right after this on America in Focus,

powered by thecentersquare.com. Hi, this is Chris Krug, publisher of the Center Square. Our team produces the nationally read and recognized news stories at thecenter.com, the country's fastest growing, nonprofit, nonpartisan, state-focused news and information site. We deliver a information with a taxpayer sensibility through reporting that's easy to understand and easy to share with your friends and family. We know that you need information that allows you to understand what the governor and your local legislators are doing. Get the news that you need to know at the center square.com. That's the center square.com. The center square.com. Welcome back. Here are the top stories of the past week on the center square.com. A bipartisan infrastructure

bill is ready for debate after weeks of slow-moving negotiations. The bill passed a motion to proceed debate by a 67-23 vote on Thursday after a bipartisan group of 21 senators unveiled the reworked deal late Wednesday. While the full text of the bill has not been released, the deal is expected to include around $550 billion of new federal investments, a mere fraction of the $2.25 trillion proposal, President Joe Biden unveiled back in March. One point of contention surrounding the legislation is a separate $3.5 trillion reconciliation package that Democrats are hopeful to pass along with the bill, which would include money for things like child care, climate policy, and other party priorities.

The bill will be debated on the Senate floor before heading over to the House for more debate. To read more about this story and many others, visit thecentersquare.com. Now, for a closer look, over to Dan McAulb and Casey Harper. Thank you, John. Welcome to American Focus, powered by the centersquare.com. I'm Dan McAleb, executive editor of the Center Square Newswire Service. Joining me this week and every week is Casey Harper, Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief for the Center Square. We are recording this on Friday, July 30th. Casey, the calendar turns to August this weekend.

It feels like summer is going to be over before I even know it gets started. How's your summer going? on? Well, you know, not too good. I was kind of hoping to go and walk mask us around some of our bigger cities, and now that works dead in the water. So, but so before then it's been good. No COVID restrictions eased up. I've been in a little bit of a post-COVID honeymoon, but maybe the honeymoon phase is over. I think so. We're going to be talking in just a moment about all of the COVID news from this week and everything from the vaccine mandates and mask mandates and all that in just a second.

I'm less than two weeks away from sending both of my kids a thousand miles away to college. I'm going to be a temporary empty nester. I'm not sure how to feel about that. Part of me is excited about it. Part of me is a little frightened about it. Both one will be a junior. One's going to be a freshman. they're both just not going to be here.

I've gone, you know, 20 years with kids in the house, and then now I'll have none. I'm not sure what my wife and I are going to do with ourselves. We're going to have to learn how to communicate a little bit better, maybe. Well, congratulations. Congratulations. If you need somewhere to send that extra money, you can start paying my phone bill, too. That extra money is all going to the University of Alabama and the, and Sam Houston State University.

Maybe when they graduate, I'll consider that. You seem to kids south, Dan. You knew what was good for them. Actually, it was both of their decisions. This is for another podcast, another day. They both wanted to get the heck out of Illinois, and I don't blame them. But again, if you want to learn about Illinois,

check out the Illinois-in-focused podcast. But that's for another time. So why don't we jump into the COVID- news from this week. There's a lot to unpack here. Yesterday, Thursday, President Joe Biden came out and essentially issued a mandate for federal government workers and contractors saying if they can't show a proof of vaccination, they're going to be required to wear masks, practice physical distancing, be subject to COVID-19 tests at least twice a week. Tell us about that order and what kind of response it's gotten.

Sure, if you haven't seen the order, you've probably seen the response on social media. This is causing a lot of controversy. A lot of people are really happy about it, saying, you know, it's about time that the government needs to step in and hold people accountable when it comes to COVID. And then other people are saying, you know, this didn't work the first time. And we shouldn't allow the government to have this kind of power or what they would call overreach. What's causing this, you know, resurgence is a, you know, the delta variant, which is the different kind of strand of COVID that has been going around. President Biden more transmissible. Yes, yes.

Then previous strains. So there has been a resurgence in cases, but I'm sorry, I interrupted you. Go ahead. No, you're fine. There has been the resurgence in cases, yes. And President Biden has been, you know, in several press conferences, experienced. expressed a lot of frustration with people for not getting vaccinated. And he was quoted, I think earlier this week saying, you know, basically people weren't as smart as he thought they were.

Wow. And so, of course, you know, that's kind of one aligning under the plurables moment. It's usually not a good calm strategy to insult like the entire American people. But, you know, it's showing that he's frustrated. He's taking extra measures. And a lot of Americans are just digging in their heels. So in the Center Square story, you can read it at the center square.com, our story on President Biden's mandate for federal workers, there was this other interesting quote that stood out to me, and I'm going to quote it directly. President Biden said, it's still a question of whether the federal government can mandate the whole country, meaning mandate vaccines for the whole country. I don't know that yet.

That sounds like to me that if he legally can do that, he is going to do that. What are your thoughts? Yeah, I mean, I think it's kind of testing the waters. It's like when a candidate says they're thinking about running for president to see how the media responds, to see how what the kind of response is. And this sounds similar to trial balloon, throw this out there, you know, see what the response is, kind of get a taste of how controversial. this will be to require vaccines, to require vaccination.

And also just keep in mind, even if it's not illegal, even if, you know, he, you know, you can still do it. And then the lawsuit will come, regardless of it's legal or not, it's going to get challenged. Right. Right. He's going to face a lawsuit and then it's going to go through the court system. So. And we know, we all, we know the, we all know the U.S. court system where it moves quickly so we could have a response, a matter of days. Right. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. I think you have more court cases than me then, so I'll defer to your expertise. Not as a defendant. Let's just make that. Let's make that clear. Well, so I would think if, I don't see how he can do that. There would be a massive, massive revolt of that. People just wouldn't listen. In fact, this federal mandate for federal employees and contractors, he's already gotten a ton of push. from the state of Texas, Governor Greg Abbott issued his own executive order yesterday,

saying anybody in the state of Texas cannot mandate vaccines, cannot mandate mass, including its schools. And there's been a lot of that similar type responses, particularly from Republican-led states. Governor Abbott in Texas is, of course, a Republican and they have a Republican-controlled legislature there. in Missouri this week, both the cities of St. Louis and Kansas City issued mask mandates, public mask mandates, and the state of Missouri is suing their two largest cities saying you're not allowed to do that because the legislature this year passed legislation that was

signed by the governor of Missouri, Mike Parsons, saying local governments could not do that. So just the political fighting and the it's been going on for 18 months. We've been living with COVID for 18 months right now. But it seems like it's getting it's getting worse. Yeah. And one thing I'll say, you know, a lot of people say, well, requiring vaccinations, the government has already done that, you know, for what caught, you know, for several different vaccines for going to public school.

But a key difference here is those vaccines, are FDA approved. FD.A. approved. Right. Right. And so that's, can you require people to get a vaccine that's not fully FDA approved? So just to just add some context to it. The FDA granted emergency use permission for this vaccine to be used, but it is not fully, it has not gone through the full FDA vetting process yet.

That usually takes years for something like that. that to happen. So President Biden's order this week comes just a couple of days after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Control, excuse me, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the CDC reversed course on its mask guidance. Tell us a little bit about that. Right. So the CDC announced this week that you should wear a mask even if you're vaccinated. that's for people who live in certain parts of the country where, you know, the surge is happening. But really, the people didn't really hear the part about the surge. What they heard was even if you're vaccinated, you have to wear a mask.

This got a lot of pushback from Republicans, particularly who say, you know, this is going to decrease people's confidence in masks, if masks, or in the vaccine, rather. If the vaccine works, if it's worth the health risks, then why do people still have after wear masks is kind of the reasoning that they're going to say it's going to happen. But the CDC has walked this back. Now the Biden administration has said that basically the Delta variant is different. And they just didn't, they kind of thought what Biden is summarizing him. He said that he had hoped everyone would have been vaccinated by now and the delta variant

wouldn't have even had the chance to arise. But now that it has, we need to mask up. I'm sure you've seen and it's been, I'm curious of what you're experiencing in Illinois with this, Dan, but in D.C., the mask mandates are going to be back in 4-4, I believe. So in Illinois, I'm in the suburbs of Chicago. Chicago, interesting you say that. Chicago's mayor, Lori Lightfoot, has said she's reconsidering mandating masks in public places. The interesting thing about that is right now in Chicago, Lollapalooza, if you're not familiar with Lollapalooza, it is this massive music festival in which tens of thousands of people go to it are packed in to the concert location or whatever. That's going on right now.

Governor Pritzker, who's had among the most restrictive mitigation efforts in the country during COVID-19, he's going there with family and friends. friends, he said. At the same time, he's urging people to mask up and to beware of the Delta strain or whatever. So once Lala Ploos is over, it's interesting, although concerning, to see what Governor Pritzker and Mayor, Lori Lightfoot, are going to do. Now, out here in the suburbs, you know, when I go out, I don't see people wearing masks. Maybe 10% of people are wearing masks. Now, that's today. After this week's news and who knows what's going to happen in the days and weeks to come here in Illinois, that very well could change. I just want to go back to the CDC's reversal on guidance. Just in May, the CDC said if you are vaccinated, you do not need to wear masks. And this reversal, as you mentioned, if you're vaccinated and you still have to wear masks. And this reversal, as you mentioned, if you're vaccinated and you still have to wear a mask, why does that incentivize people who are not yet vaccinated to get vaccinated?

Exactly. That's been a big motivation for people to get vaccinated is that they don't have to wear masks. Or, you know, in some places they're doing a thing where you can either get vaccinated or you can undergo weekly COVID test, right? But if, and so I think a lot of people have got vaccinated for that reason, just, you know, they don't have to, especially the medical profession. Some places, if you don't get vaccinated, you can't even work there. The VA, you know, has just made a vaccine mandate. But other places, you know, I know, like maybe nurses where they can either get the vaccine or they have to wear a mask and get regular COVID testing. And so a lot of them are like, oh, I'll just get the vaccine. But it erodes.

those incentives. Now, Biden has talked about other incentives, but it does erode those. And the other thing it's really eroded is the credibility of the CDC. Of course, the CDC has a lot of very educated experts there, but their handling of the official guidance and really the communications.

So it's really not done the many favors. And I think it seems like they probably know a lot about infectious diseases and things, but when it's come to the calm strategy and the politics of all this, they haven't done great job of handling it. It's just people, you know, the changing what people will call flip-lopping. It's really a lot of people. The mixed messages, in recent weeks and just over the course of the past 18 months, it's confused Americans, it's a frustrated Americans, and it's really

diminished confidence in the CDC and the federal government in general. One last thing on this point before we have to move on. President Biden, to incentivize, those who haven't been vaccinated is urging local and state governments to offer $100 per individual who has not been vaccinated to get the vaccine? Is $100 going to be enough to incentivize those who haven't been vaccinated? I don't think so. I think that there's going to be a small portion of people who have just been kind of not gotten it because they were dragging their feet procrastinating. But I think at this point, most people who haven't gotten the vaccine have some kind of hesitation or objection centered around health concerns.

So I'm not sure $100 is going to do much for them. But yes, I agree with you there. Now, we need to move on, but still COVID-related. Some more news this week regarding the border crisis. Of course, illegal immigration has surged in the U.S. this year. Every single month, there seems to be more and more. immigrants trying to enter the country illegally. The federal government under President Joe Biden has taking a much softer stance on it

to the point where they're even releasing these immigrants into the communities in these border towns, Texas being the main one, and many of them have tested positive for COVID-19, to the point where even some Democrats now are coming out and urging President Biden to switch courses on that. The city of Laredo, a border community in Texas, has filed suit over the Biden administration saying they're getting 250 to 350 migrants who have entered the country illegally dumped in their communities every single day. Many of them are COVID positive.

So one, given President Biden's stance on COVID-19 and all the restrictions he wants to put in place, it seems contradictory that the federal government would would be releasing so many migrants who are COVID positive into American communities, particularly border communities. But the president did come out with a new border plan, a new immigration plan this week that like his COVID-19 plan has gotten a lot of pushback. What can you tell us about that? Sure.

One point to make what you said is that President Trump enacted Title 42 during his administration, which was a much maligned policy that allowed border agents to turn away illegal immigrants just on the basis of the threat of COVID-19 alone. Now, a lot of critics that Trump said that this was just taking advantage of COVID to enact his own immigration preferences, and it wasn't really to prevent more COVID cases. It was to accomplish immigration goals. And, you know, whether that's true or not, we don't really know. but we do know is that the Biden administration is not enforcing that as aggressively as

trying to get in that we're seeing a lot of the pushback I mean it's just basic numbers you know if you have you know hundreds of thousands of people trying to come over every month which we do in June border patrol caught 190,000 people trying to come into the country and so if you have that many you know a certain percentage you know five 10 percent whatever it is is going to have COVID I mean it's just a statistics of it. And so that's going to be releasing five or 10,000 people and it's concentrated geographically in a few towns, really, on the border. And so, you know, this, it doesn't take the, it's not really surprising, really, that this is happening. But Biden released a big immigration plan. You know, earlier this year, Biden's budget took funding away

from the border wall. And so his plan did reemphasize that. It took funding away from the border wall. And so he has already taken flag for that. But some of the other things is he pledged an expedited removal process for those who are at the border. So that's like a kind of fancier way of saying expedited deportations, which did catch a lot of eyes and actually got Biden some flag from the left. And he also said faster processing for those seeking asylum. So, you know, faster processing, more deportations, less border wall funding, those are things to sum it up. And then the asylum issue has really got him a lot of controversy too. But the basic attacks on Biden or the Democrats say that expediting deportations is wrong.

And then Republicans say this is too little too late. It's not going to make much of a difference. It's kind of rearranging the numbers, taking some things you promised to do earlier this year and republishing them and a new press release to try to seem like you did something. and then making a couple of pledges that are kind of vague and won't actually do so, do anything. So that's, he's taken here from both sides

and the data is really crushing. I really don't think Biden wants to be defined by immigration. He wants to do infrastructure. He wants to do American families plan and create these government programs, some new entitlements. And it seems like he really wants that to be his legacy right now. He's still fighting off COVID,

considering being the vaccine overlord. and then having to deal with this border issue that's just really a headache for him and McClemore Harris. And, you know, it's not going to go away unless the federal government starts doing something about it. This lawsuit from the city of Laredo, which is a community of about 262,000 people. They're getting overwhelmed, they say, the lawsuit claims by these massive flow of migrants into their community, to the point.

where even the federal government is taking over hotels to house these folks into the in these hotels, not deporting them, not sending them back to their home countries. Many of them, not all of them, certainly, but larger percentages of them are testing positive for COVID-19, which if they go out in the community, that expands the possibility of spreading it. So again, going, you've got these two issues, COVID-19 and illegal immigration that are sort of mounting on top of each other here, particularly in these border communities. And it seems like the message from the Biden administration contradicts each other on those. But if President Biden hopes this issue goes away, it's not going to go away unless his administration starts doing

something about it. Let's move on, though, Casey, time for one last story. Some more economic news this week. What can you tell us about the latest reports? Yeah, just kind of mixed numbers for the latest federal economic data released this week. It did little to kind of alleviate the concerns that many experts have. So basically, the Department of Commerce released the GDP numbers. So GDP's gross domestic product. It's really a way of measuring the overall size of the economy and they released that data quarterly. Show that it grew 6.5% from April to June, which is, which actually is not bad for GDP numbers.

Right. But it's far below what experts expected, you know, which was about 8.5%. And the reason for that is, you know, yes, the numbers were good, but it was also coming after post-COVID, the numbers really did. And so some of this good growth was already kind of baked in. And when the economy returned to normal, we were going to see these kind of numbers. And so experts really wanted to see more. So that was kind of one of the big headlines.

And let me just, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but let me just interrupt you to you. And part of that, yes, it's decent number. It did not meet, did not come anywhere close to meet experts' expectations. But part of those expectations were driven by the fact that the federal government is printing money and sending billions and billions of billions of dollars into the states. And that sort of so that's, but so the 6.5% growth is not bad, but it's sort of artificially inflated by all these federal taxpayer dollars, which is not going to continue to be able to happen in the future. I mean, maybe it will.

Maybe they will just keep doing it until everything explodes. But you're right. It's not a good. It's kind of like if you're not losing weight, that's one thing. But if you're not losing weight and you've been in the gym every day, that's a problem. And that's kind of the analogy we've been as a country, this poor. pouring this money into the economy to stimulate it. And so when you see these lackluster numbers, it's like, man, imagine how bad it would be if we hadn't been stimulating it.

And two, this economy, this 6.5% is kind of artificial. Like how much of it is real, how much of it isn't just based on stimulus checks and government programs. And also this week, the Department of Labor, as it does every week released new unemployment. employment filing data. Numbers were down week over week, but they remain high. What can you tell us about this? Right. So these numbers have been really interesting because, you know,

this is why you should read the Center Square. I really do feel like we get context to these numbers. You'll see, you know, I saw different headlines about one will say the jobs numbers are good and one will say they're bad, right? And so that's when we're trying to get context. Basically, the jobs numbers, the people who filed for unemployment for the first time dropped to 400,000 this week. That's down from, down 24,000 from the previous week.

So, of course, that is a good thing. But the context of this is that these numbers are much higher than the pre-COVID numbers. It's almost a double what we had in 2019. And so people will say, well, the numbers are down and they're way better than during COVID. And that's true. And that's a good thing. But if we put it in context, you know, we're still double what the number was in 2019 at the same time. And so when it comes to unemployment filings, we haven't really recovered from COVID.

And I'm just say that we saw an increase of 500,000, almost 600,000 actually, ongoing unemployment claims from the previous week. So, you know, we're up to over 13 million people who are just getting those benefits every week. week and we saw an increase, you know, 500,000 last week. So, um, the numbers are, it's kind of, the context is important and understanding this. Right. And with all the talk in the states and at the federal level, um, with the delta variant of spreading and potential new restrictions being put in place, it's a little scary to think of where we might be a few weeks from now, um, a month from now, economic related, job related. So, uh, we'll be keeping an eye on that. I know you will, Casey, you can read about it at thecentersquare.com, but we are out of time. This has been the

America in Focus podcast. I'm presented by thecentersquare.com. We'll see you next week.