TRENTON, NJ – New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy on Monday admitted that no matter how many mask mandates, vaccinations and social distancing regulations his office creates, the reality is, he’s never going to be able to defeat COVID-19.
For the first time, Murphy hinted at moving New Jersey forward despite the looming threat of the virus, which may become another variant of the seasonal flu, at least from a governing standpoint.
“This is never going to go to zero,” Murphy said. “It’s going to be in our midst. A bad flu season is a couple of thousand deaths…It won’t be forever and always because we’ll never hold ourselves to a zero reality.”
The rate of transmission in New Jersey dropped below 1 this week and the third wave, spurred by the delta variant appears to be subsiding nationwide.
“We’re going to make moves and decisions based on what we think is a reasonable expected future state of the virus,” Murphy said.
Murphy hinted that plans could be in the works at some point to return to a normal, but the message comes just one month prior to his bid for re-election against Republican Jack Ciattarelli.