To quote the great political philosopher William J. LePetomane, it has something to do with saving their phony-baloney jobs. And that need has something to do with their long insistence on following the CDC’s phony-baloney guidance on masking, especially in classrooms. The Washington Post first reports on the rollback across some of the deepest-blue states, which will join red and purple states where mask mandates ended months ago, if not more than a year earlier:

In New York, Illinois and Rhode Island, governors said they would soon end requirements that adults wear face coverings in public indoor places and some, including Massachusetts, promised children would no longer have to wear them in school.

“This is what we’ve been waiting for — tremendous progress after two long years,” said Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) of New York, where the mask mandate will expire Thursday, but the school requirement will remain until at least early March. “And we’re not done. But this is trending in a very, very good direction, and that is why we are now approaching a new phase in this pandemic.”

But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and some independent experts remained more wary. They tried to slow the gathering momentum to move on from a crisis that has killed more than 900,000 people in the United States and disrupted life around the globe for more than two years.

“We continue to recommend masking in areas of high and substantial transmission,” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said at a White House briefing on the pandemic, where she noted the seven-day average of new infections, while plummeting, is still more than 247,000 each day. “That’s much of the country right now, in public indoor settings.”

The Post then observes that Democrat governors suddenly distancing themselves from the CDC and Biden administration “have no unified metric” for ending mask mandates. That, however, gets the problem backward:

This much is clear from the emerging fractures among Democrats on mask mandates: they have no unified metric for lifting pandemic restrictions.

Multiple pandemic-cautious governors announced plans to drop mask mandates in schools and indoors this week, as omicron begins to wane and the political landscape shifts.

Yet the Biden administration hasn’t done the same. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is urging Americans to wear masks in areas of substantial or high transmission — the vast majority of the country — while the agency works on new guidance.

What that means: Public health experts are divided on whether now is the moment to lift mandates, and some worry the conflicting guidance could flummox a weary public. And the issue has sparked debate over the metrics states and the federal government should use to make critical decisions.

The problem isn’t the lack of a unified metric in these states. It’s the refusal of the CDC and the Biden administration to provide any objective metric on masking and its off-ramps. Even yesterday, when the disconnect between the CDC and reality outside of their bubble had been made obvious, Walensky and Fauci couldn’t provide any clear position on what masking now accomplishes and when it can end. They have had almost two years to figure that out, especially in schools where masks are imposed on children who have only the slightest personal risk in this pandemic. And yet all they can say is that we’re “approaching normality” and that we should stay the course until they say we’ve achieved it, based on … no metrics at all.

This is nonsense on stilts, and Democratic governors starting with Phil Murphy have finally recognized it. In the first place, mask-mandate states like New York fared no better in the Omicron wave than non-mask-mandate states like Texas and Florida, a point made obvious from the CDC’s own data. Transmission has been shown to be disconnected from both mask mandates and vaccinations. On the other hand, vaccinations and therapeutics have vastly improved outcomes, and naturally acquired immunity helps in that regard to some extent as well.

Finally, the Post ignores the real metric, which is that people are fed up and won’t comply with intrusive mandates any longer. The lack of connection to science and outcome improvements from the almost religious adherence to compulsory masking has finally outweighed the panic of the pandemic. Those who want to wear masks can certainly do so, but voters don’t want to be ordered to do it, and really don’t want their children ordered to do it. Governors are dealing with that reality while the CDC clings to its mask-mandate voodoo rather than provide even a framework for a metric that not only provides an off-ramp, but a justification for the mask mandates in the first place.

It’s over. Governors of both parties have figured it out. The White House and its pandemic team will never let it go, which is what the rest of us have figured out.