Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts is expressing his disappointment on how the Biden administration lacks communication when it comes to declaring the guidelines set by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
According to Nebraska Governor, he did not learn about the CDC’s new guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention nor the Biden administration, but instead, he learned them himself through news reports.
Governors caught flatfooted by @JoeBiden's mask reversal.
Gov Ricketts: We need to see better communication from the Biden administration. "I found out about it in the news, just like the general public did," govs got no warning.https://t.co/ELS860S75P #Coronavirus #Masks— John R Lott Jr. (@JohnRLottJr) May 17, 2021
Ricketts, a Republican told Fox News in an exclusive interview his sentiments about the lack of communication from the Biden administration and the CDC, “I found out about it in the news, just like the general public did,”
The Nebraska governor also compared the lack of communication over the new mask guidance to the confusion surrounding the CDC’s decision to abruptly pause vaccines of the Johnson & Johnson after reports that it might have caused blood clots for a small group of recipients. “This is similar to what happened to when they did the Johnson & Johnson pause. We did not get a heads-up that that was coming.”
Ricketts also lamented that there is a need for better communication from the White House.
He said, “We really need to see better communication from the Biden administration, better communication from the CDC when they’re going to make policy changes so we have a heads-up on this and then can use that when we’re making decisions in our own states.”
New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu, also shares the same sentiments stating that his office also learned about the announcement not from the Biden administration but from the press.
Sununu said, “Due to the inconsistent, convoluted, and ever-changing guidance/messaging from President Biden’s CDC, the confusion from businesses and schools across the country is understandable. Here in NH, the state fully phased out restrictions a week ago – so we have already provided businesses with maximum flexibility in how they choose to handle the latest guidance from the CDC.”
Meanwhile, Ricketts explained how the lack of cohesive communication strategy from the Biden administration had caused uncertainty from businesses that are already struggling to reopen. Ricketts also noted that the communication failure, “creates more confusion when we don’t have advance notice of what’s going on. We could do a better job of planning if we did, and if not you just leave people scrambling to kind of figure it all out on their own.”
'creates more confusion when we don't have an advance notice what's going on. We could do a better job of planning if we did, and if not you just leave people scrambling to kind of figure it all out on their own.'"
— Jamie (@rangersbraves) May 17, 2021
Ricketts also expressed his concerns that the Biden administration and CDC’s abrupt announcement could hurt efforts to expand vaccinations by giving people already skeptical of the vaccine more reason to avoid getting the shot.
“If we don’t present a unified message to those folks, it just reinforces that they don’t trust the vaccine. So, by not having good communication, we’re actually creating part of the problem with regard to not getting people vaccinated.”
The CDC’s order comes more than a year after its initial recommendation that American’s mask-up and social distance. Thursday’s reversal of policy was met with disdain by many mask proponents who claim to believe science should guide policymaking.
