"Personally, I don’t think I will ever get on a plane without wearing a mask"

But the emergence of the omicron variant raises the prospect that the corner will not be decisively turned on covid for the foreseeable future, as variants continue to crop up, many Americans continue to resist vaccines and experts differ on what restrictions are necessary.

That could pose a daunting political threat to the president, whose party already faces severe head winds heading toward the midterm elections and a potentially tricky reelection battle.

“We’re never going to go back to normal. Personally, I don’t think I will ever get on a plane without wearing a mask,” said Patti Solis Doyle, a Democratic strategist who worked closely with Biden during Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign…

“There was an impression that covid was going to be almost like polio,” said Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.), who accompanied Biden as he visited her state. “It was a terrible disease. There was going to be inoculation and then it would disappear.”

Instead, she said: “We’re now I think realizing that that’s not going to be the way it is. It’s going to be like an endemic. It will probably get less and less severe over time — that seems to be the path of this virus — and so it’s going to have to be something that we get used to living with, and the best way of course of living with it is by getting vaccinated and getting boosted.”