The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention outlined new masking guidance on Friday, marking a significant change in the CDC’s prior “mask safety” guidelines: about 70 percent of Americans live in places where healthy people — including students in schools — can safely stop wearing masks indoors.

The CDC continues to recommend masking in counties where the threat from the virus is deemed high, as reported by the Associated Press, which includes about 37 percent of counties and 28 percent of the population. Significantly, the new measures greatly change the look of the CDC’s “risk map,” with more than 70 percent of us living in counties where the risk of COVID poses a low or medium threat.

This is my favorite (hilarious) part:

The guidelines are not “binding.” Local governments will continue to determine their own community guidelines. Meanwhile, freedom-loving American citizens will continue to determine their own guidelines.

The bottom line: COVID Joe™ Biden was hardest hit by the “winter of severe illness and death” news.

As reported by National Review, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky [rolling eyes emoji]  explained the rationale behind changing the guidelines [again moving the goalposts closer to where the rational among us have known they belong for how long?] to reporters on Friday, suggesting that simply looking at the number of COVID cases and test-positivity have not been factors that reflect the severity of the disease.

Again, DUH.

The Covid-19 community level we are releasing today will inform CDC recommendations on prevention measures, like masking, and CDC recommendations for layered prevention measures will depend on the Covid-19 level in the community.

This updated approach focuses on directing our prevention efforts towards protecting people at high risk for severe illness and preventing hospitals and health care systems from being overwhelmed.

As National Review further reported: (emphasis, mine)

The new guidance assigns designations to counties on the basis of community spread of Covid-19.

Counties with less than 200 new Covid-19 cases per 100,000 people in the past week have “low” community levels of the virus if Covid-19 hospital admissions are less than ten per 100,000 or less than ten percent of staffed hospital beds filled by Covid-19 patients on average in the last week.

Counties with ten to nearly 20 new Covid-19 hospital admissions per 100,000 people or between ten percent and 14.9 percent of staffed hospital beds filled by Covid-19 patients on average in the past week are at “medium” levels of the disease.

Counties with 20 or more new Covid-19 hospital admissions per 100,000 or at least 15 percent of staff hospital beds filled by Covid-19 patients on average in the past week are at “high” levels of the disease.

To be sure, nearly everything COVID-related coming from the CDC and the mouth of Walensky has been greeted by an ever-growing percentage of the U.S. population with skepticism at best; outright dismissal at worst. Toss in the power-drunk COVID Gnome “emerging and infectious diseases expert,” Anthony Fauci, COVID-obsessed occupant of the Oval Office, and the lapdog, liberal media sock puppets of CNN and MSNBC — along with the continually-moving goalposts — and it is it any wonder?

Meanwhile, as we reported, Chicago’s embattled Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Tuesday announced the Windy City will drop its mask mandate for most settings, as well as its proof-of-vaccination mandate at restaurants, bars, and other indoor establishments, at the end of February.

Additionally, the wingnut governor of Washington, Jay Inslee announced on February 17 that the heavily-blue state would kick its mask mandate to the curb, while two California school districts have now defied the state’s hypocritical as hell Gov. Gavin Newsom and made masks optional for students.

And as we reported earlier in February, even The Washington Post has finally admitted: “Mask mandates didn’t make much of a difference anyway.”

Meanwhile, a bewildered Joe Biden wistfully wanders the halls of the White House, late at night, reminiscing about the “good old days” of the pandemic — a pandemic that has been over-hyped by the Democrat Party and liberal media from the beginning.

That, or delusional Joe remains stubbornly clueless, clinging to his mask and vax obsession like Michael Moore desperately clutching a bag of McDonald’s Quarter Pounders with Cheese.

Either way? Meh.