Psaki on Lockdowns, Mandates: All Options on Table

BUCK: Here’s Jen Psaki from yesterday talking about how we’re not gonna do shutdowns, but we might go to something like them.

PSAKI: Obviously, the president is, uh, keeping the option open of, uh, making sure that he is, uh… Uh, that CDC and our public health officials, uh, can make recommendations on what’s needed to keep the American people safe. I’m not in a position to preview that, uh, or to get ahead of any decisions they may make. Uh, what I can reiterate, though, is, uh, — and you heard Dr. Fauci and Dr. Collins reiterate this this weekend.

Uh, we’ve been clear we’re not going back to the shutdowns of March of 2020. Uh, we are not going back to the economy shutting down. We’ve made too much progress, too many people are vaccinated. There’s been too much progress on the economic front. But again, uh, he has said from the beginning that we are gonna be guided by the science, guided by our public health (sputters) experts, and we’re not gonna take options off the table, what they may recommend.

BUCK: “Not gonna take options off the table.” That should send a chill down your spine, Clay.

CLAY: Not only that, I wonder for the vaccine passports in New York City, a lot of courts and a lot of judges were loath to step forward and challenge anything because of the panic that was surrounding covid and the imminent danger under which many of these regulations and rules were put in place. Now that — as you pointed out earlier in the show, Buck — relatively few people are dying from covid.

Is the panic and the emergency power that is given to state and federal officials and mayors going to be questioned more now? In other words, as many people out there listening us think about this proposed New York City regulation, is it going to be able to be enforced or not? That is, from a legal perspective, a monstrous part of this story.

BUCK: Right. We were never led to believe that this — the covid lockdowns, the vaccine mandate, the masking — was to prevent all infectious from happening. We were led to believe that this was to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed with people who are several ill and people who will do from the virus.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: Hospitals are not overwhelmed. There are not that many people going into hospitals nationwide compared to where we’ve been. There are very few people who are dying from covid in major cities like New York and Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles, and yet the rules seem to be constantly adjusting as a result.