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
Gridiron dinner so far to not be deadly which is the reason we are so worried about this in the first place that it s deadly. if it s to longer deadly we need to calm down. bret: the new czar you mentioned politico has this piee private concerns mount about biden s covid caesar. allies expressed swim larr misgivings jha s outsider thrust into a tight-knit left wing those combating the pandemic. there is lingering confusion what the departure of dr. zins as covid coordinator and jha portends. beginning of the end for the white house s crisis response. juan, what do you say? picking up on something brit was talking about what you see with dr. jha he has been all over television and twitter and cited as effective communicator with hundreds of thousands of
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
Followers. in a sense he has already proven and, you know, i think that s the reason the white house wanted him is he a proven communicator. and that s a very important aspect of this selection. it s not pop lamp within the administration because they don t know him. and people say, you know, how is he going to operate in a power center like the white house without knowing the individuals who are the power players and they don t know him. so he is going to get a deputy, i suspect, or somebody in there who is astute about how to make way in the corridors of the white house. the second thing to say on this is i think the bigger point is whether or not the white house might be pulling back, bret. maybe they think, you know what? at this point with things getting to the point where you are going to have some additional surges and back and forth but the vaccines have worked, maybe it s not as important for the president and the white house to always be out front on this and let the experts,