bret: the other thing, josh, is we are getting closer to a midterm election. so does public policy change based on the date on the calendar in november? yeah. well, it certainly does. and you can feel the white house feeling the pressure. they have a deadline this week on whether to extend the mandate, the mask mandate on public transportation affecting everything from ubers to the airplane you travel on. and that is not politically popular. i know dr. jha was on the morning shows sort of dodging the question. i think he is actually a very important voice of moderation in this administration. he sort of punted to the cdc. he punted to some of the more progressive voices in the administration on whether that was going to be extended. it s not popular. a lot of these mask mandates, they are almost all gone. philadelphia brought it back today and already democratic politicians in the state are speaking out against those measures. so the white house the last thing they want is a new sc
Analyst and josh crash hour is. brit, you have been talking about the mixed messaging for a long time where do you think messaging is going it end up if we do see a surge. i hope we are not going back to the radical the draconian measures we took in the past. dr. fauci rule that out biden administration now and the republicans are not in favor of that either. and congratulations to dr. jha. he seems willing to cite the things that are reassuring and right about them. i think is he probably a good choice in terms of messaging because they have made a mess of messaging there are controversial in the administration because is he new there and doesn t know where all the levers. i think that s all less important than his ability to give the public a clear message on how to respond to these new outbreaks which appear, including the 80 people who tested positive from the
Politics of it, that people don t want to go back to lockdowns and being prohibited from going in the office when they want to, and secondly, that if you look at a situation like china, people feel, i guess, what brit said, you know, it s insane. maybe it s political at this point. you got to think it s the government government just extending the ar thorn tarren hand to make you stay home. this is a way of expressing their political strength. it has nothing to do with the disease. bret: last thing, josh, there are treatments now. there are different things that have come about not only the vaccines but also various kinds of treatments for covid. we have advanced from where we were in 2020. there are people who fear that some parties, some places will use covid resurgence to affect the elections in different way. is that a conspiracy theory or do you think it s real. i think it s more of a conspiracy theory but dr. jha made an important point that the case counts are now decoupled
We have some big decisions coming up. and all of them point to culture wars issues on either side. there is the potential abortion issue decision coming from the supreme court in early summer. and the second thing to say is that issues like critical race theory and then the whole thing with gender fluidity transgender kids these issues are the ones lighting up the talk radio shows on the right, getting activist base, republican strategist, getting that republican activist base, you know, energized. but, you know, you look at spencer cox, the governor of utah republican. he said you know what? high rate of suicide. sometimes kids have two mommies or two daddy s. how does the teacher handle that? how do you deal with this? it s very difficult. bret: josh, brit s point earlier is how much everything costs. the white house previewing this inflation number coming out tomorrow and the inflation