Amid growing doubt about COVID origins, WHO chief says Wuhan lab-leak theory ‘on the table’

“Senior Biden administration officials overseeing an intelligence review into the origins of the coronavirus now believe the theory that the virus accidentally escaped from a lab in Wuhan is at least as credible as the possibility that it emerged naturally in the wild — a dramatic shift from a year ago, when Democrats publicly downplayed the so-called lab leak theory,” CNN reported.

The report stated that even President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, views the accidental COVID lab leak theory as “as equally plausible to the natural origins theory.”

“Intelligence agencies that were skeptical of the lab leak theory a year ago, like the CIA, also now view it as a credible line of inquiry,” a source told CNN.

This is a stark contrast to a year ago when corporate media lambasted anyone simply broaching the lab leak theory as a “conspiracy theorist” and when big tech social media platforms censored users for questioning the origins of the coronavirus pandemic.

The early narrative in the COVID-19 pandemic was that novel coronavirus emerged from a wet market in Wuhan, China. As more details emerged, many people, including former President Donald Trump, hypothesized that the coronavirus may have originated from a lab, specifically the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) grilled Dr. Anthony Fauci about the possibility that the COVID-19 pandemic was a product of gain-of-function research that may have accidentally leaked coronavirus from the Wuhan lab.

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A member of the government’s scientific advisory committee, who is allegedly a paid-up communist, has said that wearing masks and social distancing should continue for the “long term” to suppress the Chinese coronavirus and other diseases.

University College London Professor Susan Michie, who according to the British Telegraph and socialist newspaper the Morning Star is a member of the Communist Party of Britain, sits on the influential Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) which advises ministers on how to respond to the pandemic and said that “people’s behaviour” was key in controlling the pandemic.

Professor Michie told Channel 5 on Thursday, according to The Telegraph: “That is the behaviour of social distancing, of when you’re indoors, making sure there’s good ventilation or if it’s not, wearing face masks, of hands and surface hygiene. We will need to keep this going in the long term and that will be good not only for Covid, but also to reduce others [sic] diseases.”

Asked for how long the measures should continue, Professor Michie, who had reportedly earned in her youth the nickname “Stalin’s nanny”, said: “I think forever to some extent because this isn’t going to be the last pandemic.”

Michie, whose brother was best friends with Labour strategist and Stalin apologist Seumas Milne and was married to a former advisor to Jeremy Corbyn, added that Britons should get used to carrying masks the way they carry mobile phones or keys, claiming: “It’s not going to be a huge big deal, the kind of changes we’re talking about.”

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Social media giant Facebook has announced that it will now be “reducing the distribution” of individual accounts that share misinformation across its platform, even as the Masters of the Universe and their army of “fact-checkers” struggle with the definition of misinformation on topics such as the origins of the coronavirus pandemic.

The Verge reports that in yet another attempt to crack down on misinformation on the platform, Facebook has announced that it will not only make posts containing misinformation less visible but will actually limit the visibility of individuals users who share them. Making a user less visible to others based on their posts is very similar to shadowbanning.

Facebook has previously employed a number of other methods to crack down on misinformation, including working with “fact checkers” and employing moderators. Now the company plans to bury the accounts of users that share posts that it considers misleading.

“Starting today, we will reduce the distribution of all posts in News Feed from an individual’s Facebook account if they repeatedly share content that has been rated by one of our fact-checking partners,” the company wrote in a press release.

Posts the company believes are misleading are already downranked in Facebook’s News Feed, but now it appears that the company will be taking action against users who share alleged “misinformation.” Of course, this could mean that users that unwittingly share posts containing misinformation could unknowingly have their accounts buried on the platform.

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Intelligence agencies in the United Kingdom are reportedly working with the United States to investigate the theory that the Chinese coronavirus pandemic leaked from a laboratory.

The former head of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), Sir Richard Dearlove, said that the question of a lab leak has become an “intelligence issue” in which British spies may need to “incentivize” defectors within the communist country to come forward and reveal the truth of the origin of the Wuhan virus.

A senior Whitehall security source told the Daily Telegraph — a newspaper with close ties to the ruling Conservative government — that British intelligence investigators are working alongside their American counterparts to uncover the real origin of the pandemic.

“We are contributing what intelligence we have on Wuhan, as well as offering to help the American to corroborate and analyze any intelligence they have that we can assist with,” said the source.

“What is required to establish the truth behind the coronavirus outbreak is well-sourced intelligence rather than informed analysis, and that is difficult to come by.”

Sir Richard Dearlove, who has been a vocal proponent of the idea that the virus emanated from the Wuhan laboratory, said that many scientists refrained from backing the idea out of fear of appearing to side with former President Donald Trump.

“Nobody wanted to associate themselves with Trump, and now you’ve got Biden they’ve all literally switched sides,” Sir Richard said, adding: “Now, suddenly, the dam has broken.”

“I sent this material to Porton Down a year ago and what infuriates me is that a year ago people refused to listen to us. Over the last year anyone who thought that has been accused of being a conspiracy theorist, and told you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

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On Thursday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki admitted that the administration is identifying posts to Facebook that contain “misinformation” about coronavirus vaccines and is in “regular touch” with the Masters of the Universe. Psaki specifically admitted that the administration is flagging “problematic” posts to Facebook.

“We are in regular touch with the social media platforms and those engagements typically happen through members of our senior staff and also members of our COVID-19 team,” Psaki told reporters, adding “his is a big issue, of misinformation, specifically on the pandemic.”

“We’ve increased disinformation research and tracking within the Surgeon General’s Office. We are flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation.”

Psaki’s comments followed demands from Surgeon General Vivek Murthy for social media companies to clamp down on alleged misinformation about the pandemic and coronavirus vaccines.

“Health misinformation has led people to resist wearing masks in high-risk settings. It’s led them to turn down proven treatments and to choose not to get vaccinated. This has led to avoidable illnesses and deaths,” warned Murthy.

Facebook, along with other major tech companies, has cracked down on a wide swathe of constitutionally protected speech about the coronavirus and vaccines. In March of this year, it censored a Wall Street Journal op-ed from a Johns Hopkins surgeon who argued that the United States would likely achieve herd immunity against the virus by April.

The social network also bans so-called misinformation about coronavirus vaccines, despite the fact that Mark Zuckerberg himself has expressed concerns about the unknown long-term side effects of vaccines that can modify DNA and RNA. Zuckerberg’s comments came to light in a leaked video published by undercover journalists at Project Veritas in February.

In an implicit recognition that the facts around the coronavirus are not settled, Facebook earlier this year reversed its position on discussion of the theory that coronavirus is a man-made virus that potentially leaked from a lab.

The open admission that the White House coordinates censorship with Facebook will likely be welcomed by lawyers for Donald Trump, whose recently-announced lawsuit against the tech giants in part rests on claims that social media companies colluded with government bureaucrats and politicians to suppress his speech on their platforms.

Another lawsuit, brought by Harmeet Dhillon’s Liberty Center on behalf of pro-Trump activist Rogan O’Handley, also makes the public-private collusion argument, presenting evidence that Twitter colluded with the government of California to suppress political speech.

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Facebook got it wrong. They’ve got it wrong on many other occasions and will get it wrong on many future occasions, of course, but this time is different — they’ve admitted they got it wrong.

The company recently backtracked on a longstanding policy of coronavirus-related censorship, saying it would no longer remove claims that the virus is man-made or lab manufactured.

As Breitbart News’s Simon Kent reported, this occurred on the same day that President Biden ordered intelligence agencies to increase efforts to discover the cause of the virus:

The policy change came on the same day President Joe Biden ordered U.S. intelligence agencies to “redouble their efforts” to investigate the origin of the virus, despite ending a State Department investigation under former President Donald Trump seeking the same goal, as Breitbart News reported.

Facebook released a memo detailing its new stance, pointing to “ongoing investigations” as reason for its change of heart while adding the proviso other restrictions remain.

Conservative media has also been investigating the “lab leak hypothesis,” the theory that the Wuhan coronavirus originated in a lab, and most likely spread as a result of a leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology since the beginnings of the pandemic in 2020. The Trump administration investigated the possibility that the virus originated in a Chinese bioweapons lab, via a State Department investigation.

Yet the mainstream media, in collusion with the tech giants, did everything it could to close off this line of inquiry. In January 2020, at the very start of the outbreak, Twitter blacklisted an entire news organization, ZeroHedge, for investigating links between the Wuhan Institute and the virus (the ban, which Twitter initially said was permanent, was later reversed).

Only now, after approval from the Biden administration, is Big Tech backtracking.

But what about all the people who were censored? What about all the people who were banned? Is Facebook going to apologize to them? Is it going to reinstate the banned accounts?

Probably not, because one of the new rules of Silicon Valley appears to be: you aren’t allowed to be right before the media and Democrats are. You have to wait for them to catch up — and only then can you discuss the likely truth without the risk of censorship.

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Twitter locked the account of the National File, a national populist news website, for reporting on a tweet from Tami Burages, a woman who says her 13-year old nephew died three days after receiving a second dose of Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine. Twitter later said the account had been locked in error and reinstated it.

According to a Twitter spokesman, the platform took enforcement action on the National File’s account in error. That action has been reversed and the account has been reinstated.

The National File’s report was about Twitter user Tami Burages, who said her teenage nephew had died shortly after receiving a second dose of the Pfizer vaccine.

“Our family is devastated,” said Burages “I struggled with putting this out on twitter. I am pro-vaccine. We vaccinated my own 14-year-old son as soon as it was available. I know it is *mostly safe*. But Jacob is dead now.”

Our family is devastated.

I struggled with putting this out on twitter. I am pro-vaccine. We vaccinated my own 14-year-old son as soon as it was available.

I know it is *mostly safe*.

But Jacob is dead now.

— Tami Burages (@tburages) June 20, 2021

“I do believe that the vaccine is saving millions of lives,” continued Burages subsequent tweets. “But should any innocent child be a sacrificial lamb in this endeavor? There are moral, ethical and health questions that need to be answered. If Jacob had not received the 2nd shot, we believe he would be alive today.”

I do believe that the vaccine is saving millions of lives. But should any innocent child be a sacrificial lamb in this endeavor? There are moral, ethical and health questions that need to be answered.

If Jacob had not received the 2nd shot, we believe he would be alive today.

— Tami Burages (@tburages) June 20, 2021

Saying parents should be “warned of the risk,” Burages called on the Center for Disease Control (CDC) to investigate.

Tom Pappert, editor-in-chief of the National File, condemned Twitter for censoring his website’s reporting.

“Twitter’s censorship here is as repugnant as it is ridiculous,” said Pappert. “National File does not publish medical misinformation. We published a report containing direct quotes from a woman who – using Twitter – expressed concern about the death of her 13-year-old nephew, Jacob Clynick, which occurred after he received the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine.”

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Vaccinated visitors to Disney World and Disneyland will no longer have to wear masks starting Tuesday in most areas of the theme parks.

The Orlando park will still require face coverings in some places, including on Disney transportation methods such as buses, monorails, and the Skyliner, a gondola lift system. Guests who are not fully vaccinated will still be required to wear masks in all indoor locations.

“We’re not quite ready to bring back everything yet, but we are optimistic and look forward to the day when Disney pals and princesses are able to hug once again,” the company said.

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Disney World will also relax some of its protocols on social distancing, expanding capacity in places such as shops, restaurants, attraction boarding, transportation, and theaters, the company said in a release.

Some experiences and entertainment options may remain unavailable or with limited capacity for the time being, though the company did not specify which attractions. The park will continue maintaining its “high standards” for cleanliness and will keep hand sanitizer stations in place for guests.

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The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is holding an “emergency meeting” this week, June 18, to discuss cases of heart inflammation disorders among young people after receiving a vaccine for the Chinese coronavirus.

A CDC presentation via the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) detailed the preliminary findings in a slideshow presentation on vaccine safety updates for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), although it notes the findings and conclusions “do not necessarily represent the official position of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) or the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).”

One of the topics covered was the emergence of myocarditis and pericarditis following mRNA vaccinations, reporting 475 cases in patients younger than 30.

However, according to the presentation, 226 of the 475 case reports actually “meet CDC working case definition; follow-up and review are in progress for remaining reports.”

“[Two hundred eighty five] of 475 case reports had known disposition at the time of report review,” the report reads, noting that 270 patients have been discharged, and 15 are still hospitalized, with three remaining in the intensive care unit.

“It’s a bit of an apples-to-oranges comparison because, again, these are preliminary reports,” Dr. Tom Shimabukuro, a CDC vaccine safety official, said. “Not all these will turn out to be true myocarditis or pericarditis reports.”

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The United States has now lost over 600,000 mothers, fathers, children, siblings and friends to COVID-19, a painful reminder that death, sickness and grief continue even as the country begins to return to something resembling pre-pandemic normal.

A bride forced by the pandemic to have a Zoom wedding is planning a lavish in-person anniversary celebration this summer, but all of the guests must attest they are vaccinated.

A Houston artist, still deep in grief, is working on a collage of images of people who died in her community. Others crowd theaters and bars, saying it is time to move on.

“There will be no tears – not even happy tears,” said Ali Whitman, who will celebrate her first wedding anniversary in August by donning her gown and partying with 240 vaccinated friends and family members in New Hampshire.

COVID-19 nearly killed her mother. She spent her wedding day last year with 13 people in person while an aunt conducted the ceremony via Zoom.

“I would be remiss not to address how awful and how terrible the past year has been, but also the gratitude that I can be in a singular place with all the people in my life who mean so much to me,” said Whitman, 30.

The United States passed 600,000 COVID-19 deaths on Monday, about 15% of the world’s total coronavirus fatalities of around 4 million, a Reuters tally shows.

The rate of severe illness and death has dropped dramatically as more Americans have become vaccinated, creating something of a psychological whiplash that plagues the millions whose lives have been touched by the disease. Many are eager to emerge from more than a year of sickness and lockdown, yet they still suffer – from grief, lingering symptoms, economic trauma or the isolation of lockdown.

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A report on the origins of COVID-19 by a U.S. government national laboratory concluded that the hypothesis of a virus leak from a Chinese lab in Wuhan is plausible and deserves further investigation, the Wall Street Journal said on Monday, citing people familiar with the classified document.

The study was prepared in May 2020 by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and was referred to by the State Department when it conducted an inquiry into the pandemic’s origins during the final months of the Trump administration, the WSJ report said.

Lawrence Livermore’s assessment drew on a genomic analysis of the COVID-19 virus, the Journal said. Lawrence Livermore declined to comment on the Wall Street Journal report.

President Joe Biden said last month he had ordered aides to find answers to the origin of the virus. read more

U.S. intelligence agencies are considering two likely scenarios – that the virus resulted from a laboratory accident or that it emerged from human contact with an infected animal – but they have not come to a conclusion, Biden said.

A still-classified U.S. intelligence report circulated during former President Donald Trump’s administration alleged that three researchers at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology became so ill in November 2019 that they sought hospital care, U.S. government sources have said.

U.S. officials have accused China of not being transparent about the virus’ origins, a charge Beijing has denied.

Separately, Mike Ryan, a top World Health Organization official said on Monday the WHO cannot compel China to divulge more data on COVID-19’s origins, while adding it will propose studies needed to take understanding of where the virus emerged to the “next level”

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Former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said that Dr. Anthony Fauci was aware of and briefed world leaders on the potential virus leak from a Wuhan, China lab a year ago.

Gottlieb told “Face the Nation” host John Dickerson that a senior official in former President Donald Trump’s administration had informed him there was suspicion that the strain “looked unusual,” which prompted Fauci to address the possibility that it had leaked from a research laboratory in Wuhan.

Gottlieb added that Fauci briefed leaders about the possibility:

“Well, I was told at that time, back in the spring, that Dr. Fauci had gone over to a meeting of world health leaders in Europe and actually briefed them on the information that they were looking at, that this could have been a potential lab leak, that this strain looked unusual,” Gottlieb replied. “I think early on, when they looked at the strain, they had suspicions. And it takes time to do that analysis, and that dispelled some of those suspicions.”

Fauci has been under fire after thousands of his emails were made public by a Freedom of Information Act request, with some emails revealing that Fauci was briefed about the lab leak theory early on in the pandemic. Despite his knowledge of the possibility, Fauci continued to deny the leak theory’s scientific validity in public appearances.

“If you look at the evolution of the virus in bats and what’s out there now, [the scientific evidence] is very, very strongly leaning toward this could not have been artificially or deliberately manipulated … Everything about the stepwise evolution over time strongly indicates that [this virus] evolved in nature and then jumped species,” Fauci said in May of last year.

But Republican lawmakers such as Sen. Rand Paul, a consistent critic of Fauci’s, have insisted the doctor should step down and accused him of misleading the public.

“It’s time to fire Fauci! Emails that have been released now under Freedom of Information Act show two very important things: 1. FAUCI has been lying 2. I’ve been right all along,” Paul said after Fauci’s emails were released. “Stand with me today while we keep showing the way.”

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Anew report reveals that several workers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology became ill and may have even been hospitalized about a month before COVID-19 was first reported in Wuhan.

The State Department acknowledged in January 2021 the “United States government has reason to believe that several researchers inside the WIV became sick in autumn 2019.” It found that they’d experienced symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 “and common seasonal illness.”

While classified as a “common seasonal illness,” other sources indicate that the infections may have actually been quite serious:

But on Sunday, The Wall Street Journal, citing a previously undisclosed U.S. intelligence report, went further and said these workers required hospital care. The report said it was not entirely unusual for people in China to visit hospitals instead of primary care physicians, but the report could lend weight to the theory that the coronavirus leaked from a laboratory.

The story comes as Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has at times dismissed the “lab leak theory,” made waves when he acknowledged he was “not convinced” that the virus was spread naturally.

“I am not convinced about that, I think we should continue to investigate what went on in China until we continue to find out to the best of our ability what happened.,” Fauci said.

But Fauci wasn’t always willing to entertain the idea of the virus originating in a lab. “If you look at the evolution of the virus in bats and what’s out there now, [the scientific evidence] is very, very strongly leaning toward this could not have been artificially or deliberately manipulated. … Everything about the stepwise evolution over time strongly indicates that [this virus] evolved in nature and then jumped species,” Fauci said in May 2020.

China has continued to deny that the pandemic causing virus originated from a lab, even going so far as to promote conspiracy theories that the virus was brought into China by overseas frozen seafood shipments.

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Apart from the 4th of July, nothing makes me feel as patriotic as the idea of people being lured into getting vaccinated against a disease they have like a one-in-5,000 chance of dying from by a one-in-four-million chance of winning a jackpot.

Truly we are a nation of Homer Simpsons.

Whatever works, though. Whatever works.

State health officials said Monday that more than 25,400 Covid-19 vaccine shots were administered Friday, two days after the program was announced, making it the highest vaccination day in three weeks.

Maybe more telling were the people who got vaccinated. Vaccinations for residents ages 30 to 74 spiked by 6 percent after weeks of steady decline.

“Not only have we achieved our goal of increasing public awareness and interest, but we have slowed what was a consistent decline, and in certain age groups we’re seeing an increase again,” state Health Director Stephanie McCloud said. “This is doing exactly what we intended it to do.”

I wrote about the Ohio vaccine lottery last week after it was announced but the official webpage is now available. If you’re a Buckeye and you’re vaccinated, note that you need to sign up. The state won’t automatically register you via your vaccination records. A question, meanwhile: How confident should we be that it’s the lottery, not some other vagary of the vax effort, that led to Ohio’s recent uptick?

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Back in early 2020, the Washington Post’s alleged fact checker Glenn Kessler declared the Wuhan lab leak theory bunk on numerous occasions. The entirety of the media (and Dr. Fauci) rejected the lab leak hypothesis right off the bat, seemingly on the sole basis that President Donald Trump had floated it.

“Renewed questions about the virus’s origin brought a rush of alternative theories. Some claimed the virus was a bioweapon. Others suggested it had been altered for a scientific experiment or was simply a viral sample that escaped from a lab. Let’s be clear: No scientist we spoke to thinks the new coronavirus was designed as a bioweapon” Kessler wrote last spring.

When mocked by Sen. Ted Cruz for “abandoning all presentences of journalism to produce CCP propaganda,” Kessler fired back that “We deal in facts, and viewers can judge for themselves.”

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As the SARS-Cov-2 pandemic continues into its second year, few aspects of it have become as politically charged as the theories swirling around the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

That lab has been a focus of suspicion since the earliest days of the COVID-19 crisis, primarily because it’s a high-level coronavirus research lab that sits just a few miles from where the Chinese government said the first known outbreak of the disease occurred in an outdoor wet market.

The seemingly improbable coincidence has led to suspicions that a risky coronavirus experiment may have been the source of an accidental leak of the virus from the lab into, first, Wuhan itself, then the wider world.

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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) spurred nationwide confusion when it announced last week that it was overhauling guidance on mask-wearing during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“If you are fully vaccinated, you can resume activities that you did prior to the pandemic,” the CDC said in its updated guidance. “Fully vaccinated people can resume activities without wearing a mask or physically distancing, except where required by federal, state, local, tribal, or territorial laws, rules, and regulations, including local business and workplace guidance.”

CDC Director Rachel Walensky said: “Anyone who is fully vaccinated can participate in indoor and outdoor activities — large or small — without wearing a mask or physically distancing. If you are fully vaccinated, you can start doing the things that you had stopped doing because of the pandemic.”

So, uh, everything is back to normal, everyone can go maskless if vaccinated? Not by a long shot. Not only do all the state and local laws apply (don’t forget tribal regulations), but every business and office building and sports venue can have its own rules, too.

Former Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams says the CDC blew the rollout.

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As an advocate of masking throughout much of the pandemic — especially indoors, and especially pre-vaccine — I was nevertheless struck by the fanaticism of certain fellow maskers, for whom wearing at least one face covering seemed more like a religious ritual than a common sense courtesy. Bizarrely, as the pandemic has begun coming to an end in the United States thanks to three safe and effective vaccines, many these people have dug in their heels, as if they are so committed to “science” that they don’t want normalcy to return. It’s hard to diagnose exactly what is motivating this outspoken subgroup; some of it may be a manifestation of various neuroses. Some of it may be an addiction to being obedient to powers that be (so long as the powers that be are telling them things that align with their self-created dogma). Some of it may be clinging to a sense of superiority over others, along with the accompanying scolding and hectoring. And for those who’ve felt empowered in some way over the past 14 months, some of it may be a desire to maintain that power.

Regardless, it’s been hard to miss the dead-enders. They’re the ones who’ve fought virtually every sensible and data-based effort to loosen restrictions, even well after the science clearly justified changes. They’ve raged at people who wanted to safely reopen schools, shouted at passers-by for not masking up outdoors, and flooded into social media comment sections to declare ‘blood on the hands’ of anyone who’s dared to violate the tenets of their faith, no matter how justified the ‘violation.’ Today, they’re the folks quaking in fear over, or angrily denouncing, the CDC’s belated decision to treat vaccinated people like…they’re vaccinated. The emergence of this cohort (seemingly disproportionately represented among white coastal progressives) became so unavoidable that even some center-left media covered the phenomenon, perhaps most prominently in a recent piece in The Atlantic entitled, “The Liberals Who Can’t Quit Lockdown:”

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In an interview with Good Morning America Tuesday morning, Dr. Anthony Fauci admitted to having continued to wear a mask indoors for appearance’s sake, not based on the science surrounding the protection of the vaccine.

Responding to questions on how the new mask mandates have changes his own personal mask wearing tendencies, Fauci responded, “I’m obviously careful because I’m a physician and a healthcare provider. I am now much more comfortable in people seeing me indoors without a mask.

“Before the CDC made the recommendation change,” Fauci admitted, “I didn’t want to look like I was giving mixed signals. But being a fully vaccinated person, the chances of my getting infected in an indoor setting is extremely low, and that’s the reason why in indoor settings now, I feel comfortable about not wearing a mask because I’m fully vaccinated,” Fauci continued, speaking to the efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccine.

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Over the weekend, Texas reported reaching the milestone of zero deaths from COVID-19 for the first time since March 2020. Arizona, Minnesota, and Massachusetts also recently reported COVID death-free days for the first time in months.

State of play: Other states also posted positive COVID metrics at the top of the week while COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. fell to their lowest in nearly 14 months, Reuters reported.

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Maryland reported its lowest new daily COVID-19 cases since the end of March 2020, the Baltimore Sun reported. Virginia also posted its lowest rate of new cases since the beginning of the pandemic, the Virginian-Pilot wrote.

Of course, expect this to spark more political debates about how individual states have handled mask mandates and reopening. As Newsweek pointed out, in March, Biden called Texas’ leaders reopening plan “neanderthal thinking.”

And it’s important to remember, plenty of states are still battling to get their case counts down. Alabama, Colorado and Michigan have the most cases per capita in the nation.

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The United States Senate on Monday joined a large swath of the nation in taking off their masks inside the senate chamber thanks to last week’s announcement by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that fully vaccinated people no longer need to wear masks.

“I think it’s just kind of the CDC guidance,” said Sen. John Thune , R-S.D., told The Hill Monday.

According to the report, most members in the upper chamber, including leadership on both sides of the aisle, shed their masks as they returned for a procedural vote.

The CDC announced last week that anyone who has been “completely” vaccinated from COVID-19 can now stop wearing masks and socially distancing from other fully vaccinated people indoors.

The report said that most Republicans did not wear masks in the senate, but Democrats were “more evenly split” in donning the protective face coverings.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., quipped that he was “free at last” while leaving the chamber mask less.

Meanwhile in the lower chamber, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., seems in no rush to end that body’s mask mandate.

Last Thursday, Pelosi said her chamber would keep its mandate despite the new CDC guidelines, Business Insider reported.

When a reporter asked the speaker about the new guidance and ending the mandate, Pelosi said definitively “no.”

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