I’m no opponent of loosening public health restrictions; in fact, I prefer that many of these measures are dropped. However, I find it odd that restrictions were so fast to go when many officials were hesitant to do so at the beginning of the month.

So, that leads many to wonder: “What changed?”

It’s not only members of the media, but many democratic governors also start dropping their mask mandates; they make the same claim: “the science changed”. However, people living in states without mandates have relatively similar numbers.

Many states have ended mask mandates before the end of 2020 and haven’t had numbers much different from states with mandates. In fact, in the latest Omicron surge in January, Florida, and California had similar numbers.

The ineffectiveness of masks was apparent with the emergence of the Omicron variant. While this variant was known to be less deadly and cause fewer hospitalizations with was much more transmissible.

In fact, a report from NPR in late December acknowledged that Omicron was vast out-competing Delta.

“Researchers compared the spread of omicron and of delta among members of the same household and concluded that omicron is about 2.7 to 3.7 times more infectious than the delta variant among vaccinated and boosted individuals.” With this data out and not particularly shocking, mandates should have been dropped before the beginning of March.

However, many politicians, like New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, announced on February 8th that the state would end mandates in early March.

Despite my personal beliefs, the timing is a bit concerning, just in time for Joe Biden’s State of the Union Address. For instance, Washington D.C dropped their mask mandate on March 1st, the same day Biden gave his speech. Was science changing, or was it public opinion changing?

It’s no coincidence that mandates start to get lifted as polls show Democrats far behind Republican candidates. In fact, midterms are not looking good for Democrats.

As of right now, the Democrats have a four-seat majority in the House of Representatives and an even Senate with Vice President Kamala Harris as their tiebreaker, with many Democrats not running for reelection.

James Lindsay from the Council of Foreign Relations noted in a blog post that “thirty-one incumbent House Democrats will not be running for reelection.”

In addition, Republicans have gained support throughout the Biden administration. Lindsay says, “Americans moved toward the Republican Party in 2021. Gallup found at the start of the year that Democrats led Republicans in party identification by nine percentage points. By the end of the year, Republicans led by five points. That fourteen-point swing is among the largest Gallup has ever recorded.”

Now that Democrats are behind in the polls, in his State of the Union Address, Joe Biden said that the country should unify over COVID, which I support.

However, Joe Biden hasn’t been very unifying on COVID policy. In fact, it wasn’t too long ago that he tried to force an unconstitutional vaccine mandate, which would force companies to fire employees who refused to get vaccinated. That doesn’t sound very unifying to me.

As I said, I want the country to come together over COVID. There are many things I feel should be common ground. Still, actors on both sides of the political aisle are letting politics interfere with policy.

I’m all for ditching mask mandates, but don’t flip on a dime just because the polls change; it causes people to lose faith in the public health establishment. All I’m asking is to keep politics out of public health decisions and policies that affect everyone.