President Joe Biden on Tuesday wore a mask as he approached a podium outside the White House and then took it off and walked back inside without putting it back on to show that it’s now safe for fully-vaccinated Americans to go without a mask while outside and not in a crowd, The Daily Mail reports.
Biden wore a mask, along with his typical aviator sunglasses, as he walked across the White House’s North Lawn to a podium before reporters. When asked what message he was there to give, Biden took off the mask and said, “Watching me take if off and not put it back on until I'm inside.”
The president was fully-vaccinated against Covid-19 before his inauguration in January.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters that Biden will follow the new guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which state that fully-vaccinated people can go outside without wearing a mask as long as they are not in a large group of people.
“He'll be following public health guidelines so I think you saw him outside today - he took the mask off, he didn't put the mask back on,” Psaki said during a press briefing. “It will take some time to adjust and adapt for all of us.”
Biden added during his appearance, which lasted about five minutes, that “Vaccines are about saving your life, but also the lives of the people around you, but they're also about helping to get us get back to closer to living our normal lives, getting together with friends, going through the park for a picnic without needing a basket or back to that place now as long as you get vaccinated. So go get the shot. It's never been easier.”
The president then walked back to the White House while holding his mask in his hand.
CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said in a press briefing on Tuesday that “If you are fully vaccinated, things are much safer for you.”
She added, “There are many situations in which Americans do not need to wear masks if they are fully vaccinated, particularly outdoors.”
Walensky said, “There is increasing data that suggests that most of transmission is happening indoors rather than outdoors, less than 10 percent of documented transmissions in many studies have occurred outdoors, we also know there's almost a 20-fold increase of transmission in the indoor setting versus the outdoor setting.”
She noted, “That coupled with the fact that we now have 37 percent over the age of 18 fully vaccinated and the fact that case rates now are starting to come down motivated our change.”
Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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