Two of the Food and Drug Administration’s top vaccine regulators will leave the agency this fall, a development that could disrupt the F.D.A.’s work on deciding whether to recommend coronavirus vaccines for children under 12 and booster shots for the general population.
Dr. Marion Gruber, the director of the F.D.A.’s vaccines office, will retire at the end of October, and her deputy, Dr. Philip Krause, will leave in November, according to an email that Dr. Peter Marks, the agency’s top vaccine regulator, sent to staff members on Tuesday.
One reason for their departure was that Dr. Gruber and Dr. Krause were upset about the Biden administration’s recent announcement that American adults should get a coronavirus booster vaccination eight months after they received their second shot, according to people familiar with their thinking.
Neither believed there was enough data to defend such a decision, the people said, and both viewed the announcement, amplified by President Biden, as applying pressure on the F.D.A., the people said.
Dr. Marks said that he would serve as the acting director of the vaccines office while the agency searched for its next leader. Stephanie Caccomo, a spokeswoman for the agency, said it was “confident in the expertise and ability of our staff to continue our critical public health work.”
Some public health experts have said the administration’s booster shot announcement, which included a caveat that the F.D.A. would first have to clear such shots, pre-empted the agency and undermined its responsibility to make that assessment on its own, led by career scientists.
Some have also challenged the plan for booster shots as premature, saying the available data shows that the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines are holding up well against severe disease and hospitalization, including against the Delta variant. Extra shots would be warranted only if the vaccines failed to meet that standard, some have said.
White House officials have stressed that the plan for Americans to start receiving boosters next month was uniformly endorsed by the most senior federal health officials, including Dr. Janet Woodcock, the acting F.D.A. commissioner. And they have described the need to develop a booster plan as urgent in light of growing evidence that the vaccines lose potency against infection over time — a trend that they fear suggests their protection against severe disease and hospitalization could also soon weaken.
The officials have specifically cited data from Israel, which vaccinated more of its population earlier than the United States, as a particularly worrisome sign of what could lie ahead. Data from other countries “actually has led us to be even more concerned about increased risk of vaccine effectiveness waning against hospitalization, severe disease and death,” Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said at a White House briefing on the pandemic on Tuesday.
Asked about reports that Dr. Gruber and Dr. Krause were unhappy with pressure on the agency, Jeffrey D. Zients, the White House’s Covid-19 response coordinator, reiterated that the booster strategy is contingent on F.D.A. review.
“As our medical experts laid out, having reviewed all the available data, it is in their clinical judgment that it is time to prepare Americans for a booster shot,” he said at the briefing. “We announced our approach in order to stay ahead of the virus, give states and pharmacies time to plan and to be transparent with the American people.”
But some critics have said that explanation falls short because career F.D.A. regulators are now trying to determine whether booster shots are safe and effective after the White House — and their own agency head, Dr. Woodcock — have already endorsed administering them.
“This process has been the reverse of what we would normally expect in vaccine policy,” with the administration announcing plans based on a certain outcome before regulators can complete their review, said Jason L. Schwartz, associate professor of health policy at the Yale School of Public Health. “That has made it even more complicated and confusing for the public.”
At least 180 coronavirus infections in three states have been traced to an Illinois youth camp and an affiliated men’s conference that did not require attendees to be vaccinated or tested for the virus, according to an investigation published on Tuesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
There have been no deaths linked to the outbreak, but five of those infected required hospitalization, according to the C.D.C., which noted that all of those hospitalized were unvaccinated. Roughly 1,000 people in four states were ultimately exposed to the virus by people who attended the two events, which took place in mid-June.
The report, which expands on an earlier investigation by the Illinois Department of Public Health, highlights the perils of ignoring established safety guidelines for summer camps, business meetings and religious gatherings during a pandemic that continues to pummel the United States.
And with the Delta variant causing significant spikes in infections across many states, some public health officials have expressed concerns about large Labor Day gatherings that do not include masks, or gate-keeping measures for admission, like testing or proof of vaccination.
In the report, more than 120 of those infected were camp and conference attendees, and most of the others were members of their immediate households, researchers said. Twenty-nine of the 180 people infected were fully vaccinated against Covid-19, which is also known among epidemiologists as SARS-CoV-2.
“This investigation underscores the impact of secondary SARS-CoV-2 transmission during large events such as camps and conferences when Covid-19 prevention strategies, including vaccination, masking, physical distancing, and screening testing, are not implemented,” the C.D.C.’s report said.
Although coronavirus infections have affected youth camps across the country, those that have embraced testing and masks for attendees — and contact tracing and isolation for the infected — have fared much better than those that have taken a more laissez-faire approach, according to a number of studies.
Sarah Patrick, the acting epidemiologist for the state of Illinois, said the outbreak illustrated the role that children can play in transmission of the virus — and the importance of ensuring they are included in efforts to curb its spread.
“We’ve learned that kids, who some had thought might not be able to easily spread disease between each other, can actually be the fire starter that increases transmission beyond their immediate contacts and into the community,” she said.
The Crossing, a nondenominational Christian group that organized the five-day youth camp and a two-day men’s conference, did not ask participants to be vaccinated or tested, nor did it not require mask wearing during the gatherings.
The “What to Bring” page of camp’s website includes water shoes, sleeping bags and the Bible, but makes no mention of masks. Campers were between 14 and 18 years old, making them eligible for the vaccines.
The phone number listed on the website for Crossing Camp was disconnected on Tuesday. Email and voice mail messages left by a reporter seeking comment at the church’s main office in Quincy, Ill., were not immediately returned.
A New Jersey woman who used the Instagram handle @AntiVaxMomma was charged in a conspiracy to sell hundreds of fake coronavirus vaccination cards over the social media platform, Manhattan prosecutors said on Tuesday.
The allegations against the woman, Jasmine Clifford, 31, were unveiled in Manhattan criminal court. Prosecutors said that Ms. Clifford sold about 250 forged cards over Instagram.
She also worked with another woman, Nadayza Barkley, 27, who is employed at a medical clinic in Patchogue, N.Y., to fraudulently enter at least 10 people into New York’s immunization database, prosecutors said.
There was a warrant out for Ms. Clifford’s arrest, but she did not appear in the courtroom on Tuesday. She is expected to be charged with two felonies related to the scheme, in addition to the conspiracy charge, which is a misdemeanor.
Ms. Barkley, who did appear in court, was charged with a felony, as were 13 people who purchased the cards, some of whom worked in hospitals and nursing homes. Lawyers for Ms. Clifford and Ms. Barkley could not immediately be reached for comment.
With only about 52 percent of the country fully vaccinated and a significant minority of Americans skeptical of the vaccines, forged cards are offered up on messaging services like Telegram and WhatsApp, as well as social media platforms like Instagram. Counterfeits have been spotted for sale on Amazon and Etsy.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection said this month that its officers in Memphis had seized more than 3,000 forged cards in 2021 so far. Earlier this year, the National Association of Attorneys General sent a letter to the heads of Twitter, Shopify and eBay asking that they take immediate action to halt the sale of the fake cards on their websites.
Beginning in May, prosecutors said, Ms. Clifford, who described herself online as an entrepreneur and the operator of multiple businesses, began advertising forged vaccination cards through her Instagram account.
She charged $200 for the falsified cards, prosecutors said. For $250 more, Ms. Barkley would enter a customer’s name into New York’s official immunization database, enabling him or her to obtain the state’s Excelsior Pass, a digital certificate of vaccination.
Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the Manhattan district attorney, released a statement that called on Facebook, Instagram’s parent company, to crack down on fraud.
“We will continue to safeguard public health in New York with proactive investigations like these, but the stakes are too high to tackle fake vaccination cards with whack-a-mole prosecutions,” Mr. Vance said. “Making, selling, and purchasing forged vaccination cards are serious crimes with serious public safety consequences.”
A spokesman for Facebook said the platform prohibited anyone from buying or selling vaccine cards, that it had removed Ms. Clifford’s account at the beginning of August, and that it would review any other accounts that might be doing the same thing, removing any it turned up.
A popular TikTok user whose handle is @Tizzyent highlighted Ms. Clifford’s scheme in a viral video this month. A spokeswoman for the Manhattan district attorney’s office said that the video had not led to the charges against Ms. Clifford and the others, and court documents indicated that Ms. Clifford had been under investigation since June.
The charges against Ms. Clifford and her collaborators underscore a black-market industry for counterfeit vaccination cards that has come roaring into existence this year.
Concerns about forged cards have risen as states, cities and corporations have shown more willingness to mandate vaccinations for certain activities and groups.
Earlier this month, New York City announced that it would begin to require that workers and customers at indoor restaurants, gyms and performances have gotten at least one dose of the vaccine.
Pennsylvania’s governor said on Tuesday his administration was imposing a statewide mask requirement in all schools, becoming the latest governor to embrace a politically charged but federally recommended precaution.
Masks will be required for teachers, staff and visitors in public and private schools, early learning programs and child care centers in Pennsylvania beginning Sept. 7. The mandate was imposed by order of the state’s acting secretary of health, Alison Beam, who appeared at a news conference with Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat.
“Wearing a mask in school is necessary to keep our children in the classroom, and to keep Covid out,” Mr. Wolf said.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended masking for everyone inside a school, regardless of vaccination status, as a way to keep students safe for in-person schooling. Extra safety measures are especially important in schools because no coronavirus vaccine has been federally authorized for children younger than 12, federal health officials have said.
Republican politicians around the country contend that imposing mask requirements infringes on individual liberties, and many states with Republican governors, notably Florida and Texas, have fought mask mandates by school districts and localities.
Some districts have instituted mask mandates anyway, leading to legal battles. The U.S. Department of Education announced on Monday that it was beginning an investigation into whether bans on mask mandates in five states violated civil rights laws that protect disabled students.
States with Democratic governors, including California, New York and Louisiana, have adopted universal mask mandates in schools, as has the Republican governor in Massachusetts. Data collected by The New York Times indicate that Pennsylvania is the 16th state to order a statewide school mask mandate.
Pennsylvania is faring better than many states during the latest wave of infections, but the state has still seen significant increases in reported cases, hospitalizations and deaths, according to data collected by The Times.
Mr. Wolf, a Democratic governor who must work with a Republican-controlled legislature, said earlier this summer that he thought it was best for school districts to choose their own measures to protect students and staff.
But on Tuesday Mr. Wolf said that the rapid spread of the Delta variant, many requests from his constituents and a spike in cases, particularly among children, had changed his mind.
That reversal was not acceptable to the Pennsylvania Senate’s president pro tempore, Jake Corman, a Republican, who said “it is completely disingenuous for him to flip-flop now when he didn’t like the choices school districts made” in a statement on Tuesday.
“Our position throughout the pandemic has been consistent — we believe in local control,” Mr. Corman added. “School districts are best suited to make the decisions regarding the health and safety of students, and they should be empowered to make those choices.”
Mr. Wolf said that protecting people in schools was more important.
“We need to put politics aside,” Mr. Wolf said. “We need to get back to what matters: Keeping students safe, and keeping students in the classroom.”
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70% of E.U. Adults Are Fully Vaccinated, Official Says
Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, lauded the milestone, which puts the European Union among the world’s leaders in vaccinations despite a slow start to its campaign.
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Seventy percent of adults in the European Union are now fully vaccinated, and that is more than 250 million people who are immunized. And this is a great achievement, which really shows what we can do when we work together. But the pandemic is not over. And we must remain vigilant. So, first of all, we need many more Europeans to vaccinate rapidly to avoid a new wave of infections and to stop the emergence of new variants. And I call on everyone who can to get vaccinated. This is the only way to protect yourself and the others. We need to help the rest of the world vaccinate, too. The European Union is already doing a lot. We are exporting and we are donating vaccines to our partners, and we are a lead contributor to Covax. Covax, this is our mechanism to secure vaccines for low- and middle-income countries. But more needs to be done. And we will continue to support our partners in this effort because we will only end this pandemic, if we defeat it in every corner of the globe.
Around 70 percent of adults in the European Union have been fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, E.U. officials said on Tuesday, a milestone that puts the bloc among the world’s leaders in vaccinations despite a sluggish start earlier this year and worrying discrepancies among member states.
After a fumbling start, the European Union overtook the United States in vaccinations last month, as campaigns taken together across the bloc’s 27 countries grew at a faster pace than anywhere else in the world. Tuesday’s announcement marked the meeting of a self-set deadline that once seemed far out of reach.
While the vaccination rate has slowed this month, it has yet to reach a ceiling that some experts and officials feared it would hit over the summer. Taking children and teenagers into account, more than 55 percent of the overall E.U. population has been fully vaccinated, compared with 52 percent in the United States, 61 percent in Israel, and 64 percent in Britain.
Those figures, however, mask wide differences between E.U. countries — ones that the authorities in Brussels may struggle to address, because each member country runs its own vaccination campaign.
While more than 80 percent of adults have been fully inoculated in Belgium, Denmark and Portugal, and more than 75 percent in countries like Spain and the Netherlands, the figure falls to 45 percent in Latvia, 31 percent in Romania and 20 percent in Bulgaria.
“The pandemic is not over,” said Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, the bloc’s executive arm, as she celebrated the milestone on Tuesday. “We need more. I call on everyone who can to get vaccinated.”
Some countries, like France and Italy, have implemented strong incentives for people to get vaccinated by requiring Covid passes to dine in restaurants or access cultural venues. (The pass can also be obtained with a proof of a negative test.) Significant parts of the population got vaccinated after the passes came into force, and opposition has remained limited.
But it is another story in Eastern European countries that could threaten the bloc’s handling of the pandemic in the fall and winter. In Bulgaria, disinformation about the virus, poor trust in institutions and a lack of a communication strategy to counter vaccine hesitancy have plagued vaccination efforts, including among older people. Romania, despite low vaccination rates, has sold doses to another E.U. country, Ireland, to avoid wasting them, and donated others to neighboring countries.
On Tuesday, Ms. von der Leyen said the European Union needed to “help the rest of the world vaccinate,” but vaccine diplomacy efforts have so far proved limited because of a lack of a coordinated approach from the bloc’s 27 countries to sell or donate doses.
Many countries in the European Union’s immediate neighborhood, such as Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Tunisia, are in need of doses and have among the world’s highest death tolls by size of population.
In a sign of renewed concern about the pandemic, the European Union on Tuesday recommended its member states reintroduce travel restrictions for visitors from the United States, Israel, Kosovo, Lebanon, Montenegro and North Macedonia.
The continuing fight over masks in schools, already a political tinderbox, has heated up even more: Federal officials announced that the Education Department had started investigations into five states.
The U.S. Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights notified education leaders on Monday in Iowa, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Utah that their prohibitions against mask mandates may be restricting access for students who are protected under federal law from discrimination based on their disabilities.
In letters to state leaders, the acting assistant secretary for civil rights said the department would explore whether the prohibitions “may be preventing schools from meeting their legal obligations not to discriminate based on disability and from providing an equal educational opportunity to students with disabilities who are at heightened risk of severe illness from Covid-19.”
The battle has also escalated in Florida, where the administration of Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, made good on Monday on a threat to withhold funding from local school boards that required students to wear masks. Mr. DeSantis had banned mask mandates in schools.
Florida is experiencing the worst outbreak of the coronavirus in the nation: Over the last seven days, an average of more than 16,000 people have been hospitalized each day, more than during any other period in the pandemic.
Richard Corcoran, the state education commissioner, said in a statement that his department would fight to protect the rights of parents to make health care decisions. “They know what is best for their children,” he wrote.
The penalty applies to two school districts — Alachua County and Broward County — that went ahead with mask mandates in defiance of the governor’s order. It remains unclear just how much the school boards will be affected, because the Biden administration has advised that any school district that is stripped of state funding over a backlash to pandemic precautions could use federal stimulus funds to make up the difference.
The investigations on the federal level follow the Biden administration’s promise to use the government’s muscle — including civil rights investigations and legal action — to intervene in states where governors and other policymakers have come out against mask mandates in public schools.
Miguel A. Cardona, Mr. Biden’s education secretary, has said he was particularly disturbed by prohibitions in places where the Delta variant is surging. He said that he has heard from desperate parents who fear sending their medically vulnerable children into schools that do not have universal masking.
In South Carolina, one of the targets of the federal investigation, the office of Gov. Henry McMaster, responded that the investigation was “another attempt by the Biden administration to force a radical liberal agenda on states and people who disagree with them.”
But there as in Florida, deep divisions exist within the state — not just between the state and the federal government. The South Carolina Department of Education said that the state superintendent “has repeatedly implored the legislature to reconsider” a recently passed proviso on mask mandates, which it said was being challenged in court.
Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this item included Florida among the states that the federal Education Department is investigating over their mask mandate bans. Florida is not one of the five.
Join Dr. Anthony Fauci and Times journalists (who are parents themselves) for a vital Q&A session for parents, educators and students everywhere.
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Hochul Outlines Measures to Combat the Delta Variant
Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York said she would institute a school mask mandate, pursue vaccination or mandatory testing requirements for school staff and allocate $65 million for the rollout of booster shots after federal regulators clear them.
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Every parent, and I’m a parent, your greatest anxiety pertains to the safety of your child. And that’s why we’re making our schools safe. I announced and wanted to give enough notice to school districts that we will have a mask mandate. But also I want to make sure that our school staff, anybody who enters that building, will have to be vaccinated or undergo mandatory testing, mandatory testing. And we’re in the process of getting the legal clearance for that as I speak. And with respect to booster shots, we all know how to get this done. We have the mechanism in place, we know how to set up mass vaccination sites where needed. We also know it has to be a targeted approach because everyone who got vaccinated eight months ago is vulnerable. As soon as we get the approvals from the federal government to have the ability to do this, we’ll want to have the infrastructure in place to make sure that everybody gets a booster. In fact, I’m going to announce today that I’m making $65 million available to the localities to help you set this up. Because the last thing I ever want to do is to have to have a shutdown like we saw last year. And there is no need for that. People stay vigilant. They now have the best weapon available to them that we did not have last year, and that is the vaccine.
Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York announced new measures on Tuesday designed to beat back the Delta variant of the coronavirus, including the allocation of $65 million to local health departments for the rollout of booster shots, assuming federal regulators clear them, and a plan to broaden vaccine requirements in schools and state regulated facilities.
“We’ll want to have the infrastructure in place to make sure that everybody gets a booster,” she said to a crowd in Buffalo.
Ms. Hochul, who was sworn in as governor last Tuesday, has made clear that fighting the Delta variant is her top priority, immediately announcing a universal mask mandate inside public and private schools in the state.
And in a move she previewed last week, she said on Tuesday that she was seeking the legal clearance to impose weekly testing requirements on school staff members who are unvaccinated.
The state will also be exploring vaccine requirements for staff members in state-regulated and congregate facilities, such as homeless shelters and correctional facilities, the governor said. Earlier this month, Ms. Hochul’s predecessor, Andrew M. Cuomo, said all health care workers in the state would be required to receive a first vaccine dose by Sept. 27, including staff at hospitals, nursing homes, and adult care facilities. The State Health department said in a statement it had adopted the regulation last week, removing a previously planned religious exemption. The regulation is consistent with existing requirements that health care workers be vaccinated against measles and mumps, it said.
Ms. Hochul reiterated her desire to avoid shutdowns, and said that the vaccine is “the best weapon available to us.”
“We will get through this together, my friends,” she told a crowd at the University at Buffalo School of Medicine. “We know the recipe. We know how to get this done.”
The governor did not provide specifics on the distribution of the $65 million but made clear that local health authorities will be leading the charge, in a change from the top-down approach of the previous administration. “You tell me what you need and we’ll make sure there is funding available,” she said.
The new school rules, announced shortly before students return for classes, would amount to a mandate for teachers and other school staff, with a weekly test-out option.
Washington State and Oregon have recently announced full vaccine mandates for teachers, but New York will join California in requiring all of its public and private school staff to provide proof of vaccination or test weekly. Hawaii requires all state and county employees to be vaccinated or tested, including teachers. And last week New Jersey’s governor said that all teachers in that state would have to either be vaccinated or submit to weekly testing.
On Monday, the European Union removed the United States from its “safe list” of countries whose residents can travel to its 27 member states without requirements such as quarantine and testing.
As of Tuesday, at least one country had put new restrictions on travelers depending on their vaccination status: Italy said it would require unvaccinated travelers to quarantine for five days; vaccinated travelers must take a test for the coronavirus before entering.
Here’s a look at what the developments mean for vaccinated and unvaccinated people:
What just happened? How will this change my trip to Europe?
Since June, the United States has been on the European Union’s “safe list” for travel, which cleared the way for American travelers to visit many E.U. member countries without quarantining.
In addition to taking the United States off the safe list on Monday, the European Council, the European Union’s governing body, released a recommendation urging member countries to issue travel restrictions for visitors from the United States who are unvaccinated against the coronavirus.
The European Union is encouraging authorities across Europe to reinstate the sort of mandatory quarantine and testing requirements that seemed to be on their way out, though primarily for unvaccinated travelers. It’s up to each country to decide if it wants to issue new requirements.
How does this affect vaccinated travelers?
The first notable changes were announced Tuesday, by Italy. Even if visitors are vaccinated, they must now obtain a negative coronavirus test 72 hours before arrival.
In general, though, if you are fully vaccinated with an E.U.-approved vaccine, which include those manufactured by Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson, the requirements you face entering an E.U. country are unlikely to change significantly.
Many member states have already been urging travelers to bring proof of vaccination and waiving quarantine requirements for those who can show proof of vaccination.
What about unvaccinated travelers?
Under Italy’s newly announced policy, unvaccinated American travelers will now have to “self-isolate” for five days upon arrival in the country according to the Italian National Tourist Board.
Previously, unvaccinated visitors from the United States needed to take a coronavirus test 48 hours before touching down in Italy, but they did not have to quarantine.
After entering training camp as New England’s starting quarterback, Cam Newton didn’t just lose that job on Tuesday — he lost his roster spot, too.
The Patriots cut Newton, the N.F.L.’s most valuable player in 2015, as they began paring their roster to the league-mandated 53 players before Tuesday’s 4 p.m. deadline. The move allows the rookie Mac Jones, who excelled in camp and the preseason, to start in Week 1 against the Miami Dolphins on Sept. 12. Newton’s release was first reported by The Boston Globe.
Newton, 32, started all three of New England’s preseason games, including Sunday’s preseason finale at the Giants, in which he played two series. But he missed three days of practice last week because of what the team said was a “misunderstanding” related to Covid-19 protocols after a team-approved medical appointment out of the area. His absence enabled Jones to take more first-team snaps.
“I feel like everybody’s way ahead of where they were last year,” Coach Bill Belichick said of Newton on Tuesday, hours before news of his release surfaced. “Certainly, he started at a much higher point than what he did last year, so definitely moving in the right direction.”
Not long after he was released, Newton thanked his fans in a statement posted on his Instagram account.
“I really appreciate all the love and support during this time but I must say … please don’t feel sorry for me!! I’m good,” Newton wrote.
In training camp this season, Newton declined to confirm whether he received a vaccine against the virus, saying only that the issue was too personal to discuss. But after his medical appointment last week, he went through a five-day process to rejoin the team that applies only to unvaccinated players.
Under N.F.L. rules, unvaccinated players must be tested every day for the virus, as opposed to once a week for vaccinated players, and they cannot move around the team facility or mix with teammates as freely as vaccinated players.
Google is pushing back its return-to-office date by three months, to Jan. 10, in a decision that reflects the spread of the highly contagious Delta variant of the coronavirus.
Sundar Pichai, the chief executive of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, informed employees of the plans in an email on Tuesday. He said that after Jan. 10, offices in different countries and locations will determine for themselves when to return based on local conditions, and that employees will get 30-days notice.
Like other companies, Google has repeatedly postponed the date when it expects its employees to return to work at its offices. Last month, Google pushed back its return date from September to October and announced that it would require employees who returned to the company’s offices to be vaccinated against the coronavirus.
If Google employees return to the office in January, it will be nearly two years since the company asked its staff to work from home in the early days of the pandemic. The extended period of working from home has forced the company to rethink the future of its workplace and what is the best way to balance remote work with in-person collaboration.
As a new coronavirus wave accelerated by the Delta variant spreads across the United States, many Republican governors have taken sweeping action to combat what they see as an even more urgent danger posed by the pandemic: the threat to personal freedom.
In Florida, Ron DeSantis has prevented local governments and school districts from enacting mask mandates and battled in court over compliance. In Texas, Greg Abbott has followed a similar playbook, renewing an order last week to ban vaccine mandates.
And in South Dakota, Kristi Noem, who like Mr. DeSantis and Mr. Abbott is a potential 2024 candidate for president, has made her blanket opposition to lockdowns and mandates a key selling point. Arriving by horseback and carrying the American flag, she advertised the state’s recent Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, which drew half a million people, as a beacon of liberty.
Ms. Noem brushed aside criticism from Democrats and public health experts about the gathering, which was followed by a local Covid spike, saying on Fox News that the left was “accusing us of embracing death when we’re just allowing people to make personal choices.”
The actions of Republican governors, some of the leading stewards of the country’s response to the virus, reveal how the politics of the party’s base have hardened when it comes to curbing Covid. As some Republican-led states, including Florida, confront their most serious outbreaks yet, even rising death totals are being treated as less politically damaging than imposing coronavirus mandates of almost any stripe.
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