“The White House and CDC are in a no-win position,” said David O’Connor, a professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at the University of Wisconsin. “Not only is there not a one-size-fits-all solution that they can recommend to the entire country, but there are a spectrum of reasonable options given a receding Omicron surge in late winter.”

“Are loosening mask mandates and replacing them with recommendations, along with providing high quality masks, a reasonable policy? Sure,” O’Connor said. “Is keeping mandates in place a bit longer to get through the winter, while more than 2,000 people continue to die each day, reasonable? Sure.”…

“We spent so much time pulling out our hair over what we saw as a tendency for the administration—both the Trump and Biden administrations, frankly—to put politics ahead of sound public health measures, and now they’re taking a drubbing for actually putting the science first,” observed one public health expert who has consulted with the CDC on coronavirus policy since the pandemic’s first days. “To go from the ludicrous ‘declaration of independence’ from SARS-CoV-2 to this is progress, definitely, but can’t be easy.”