(Mrs. Greene’s father built a major construction company in the Atlanta area before selling it to his daughter and son-in-law, while Mr. Clyde’s hulking gun shop, Clyde Armory, has kept him in check. They’ve already spent more than $ 100,000 absorbed fines for their mask strike.)
Rep. Lee Zeldin, New York Republican, met just outside the room wearing his mask and being nonchalant. Omicron is mild, he said, and the sharp rise in cases, in his native Long Island and nationwide, will be followed by an equally sharp decline.
“Those who test positive include the vaccinated and the unvaccinated, but for those I speak to — and there are many who have tested positive in the past few weeks — luckily for them, every person I’ve talked to has a had a much milder experience than what was experienced in previous variants,” said Mr. Zeldin, who is running for governor of New York.
Democrats are generally less optimistic. Signs posted throughout the house proclaim in capital letters “USE OF FACIAL COVERING REQUIRED”, but they only seem to make the insurgent burrow.
“That kind of backlash, we see it across the board here,” said South Carolina Representative James E. Clyburn, the Democratic whip, who missed his granddaughter’s wedding last month while battling Covid. “And these are people I hope will survive whatever comes their way.”
The procedural machinations around voting rights legislation and the wringing of hands over President Biden’s social safety net and climate change bill may seem a little off the mark as the number of cases rises, hospitalizations across the country have risen by 84 percent in the past two weeks and the average number the number of deaths now exceeds 1,700 per day.
Behind those major issues, the pandemic is once again emerging as a political concern. House Democrats rushed new legislation on Wednesday to provide free coronavirus testing in the home, while Vermont independent Senator Bernie Sanders resubmitted his law to send N95 masks to every home.
