New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy would like to keep masks on children indefinitely, but a New York Times article is suggesting that the mandate-friendly governor will announce an end to the practice on Monday. It is expected that the governor will announce March 7th as the date the masks come off.
“Mr. Murphy, the vice-chairman of the National Governors Association, said on Sunday that he would officially announce the elimination of the mandate on Monday afternoon. The new policy will take effect the second week of March, two years after New York and New Jersey became early epicenters of a virus that has since mutated and resurged, killing more than 900,000 people nationwide,” the Times reported.
That is unless the powerful NJEA has a say on the matter.
The NJEA has been a driving force influencing the governor’s medical science with a push of political lobbying to continue COVID-19 mandates in the New Jersey public school system. It can be certain that the governor’s staff is consulting as much with union leaders regarding the unmasking decision as he is with actual medical professionals on the matter.
Murphy is late to the unmasking game. Most states in America send their students to school unmasked. In the past few weeks, Murphy’s fellow Democrat governors in New York, Pennsylvania and Connecticut would be releasing their mask mandates.
Murphy’s 30-day pandemic public health emergency order ends on Thursday and he is expected to renew that order for another 30 days. But with mounting pressure from legislators within his own party, Murphy’s streak of renewing executive orders might soon end. After that 30 day order expires in the second week of March, barring any new variants in the future, Murphy is running out of political options to continue his health mandate.
Across the country Democrat leaders are being told to back the overzealous mandates and to not allow them to become a midterm rallying cry for Republicans. The short voter attention span gives Murphy eight months to soothe the angry masses that have accumulated since his first COVID-19 executive orders in March of 2020.
Two years later, New Jersey, even with all of its lockdowns and mandates fared no better than states that didn’t shut down or enforce heaps of mandates and restrictions on its people.
A John Hopkins University study largely ignored by the left and the media showed that lockdowns and mandates were ineffective in America’s fight to stop the spread of COVID-19.
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