No shutdown, Biden insists on national mask mandate

TIL Desk/World/Washington/ United States President-elect Joe Biden on Thursday ruled out a nationwide shutdown to fight COVID-19, but insisted on a national mask mandate as part of the efforts to prevent the spread of the deadly virus which has so far taken the lives of 2,50,000 Americans.

“No national shutdown because every region, area and community can be different. And so there is no circumstance which I can see that would require a total national shutdown.”I think that would be counterproductive, but there are constraints in which the degree to which businesses can be open,” he told reporters in Wilmington, Delaware, after a meeting with a bipartisan group of governors.

Biden said he would follow the science. “I am not going to shut down the economy period. I am going to shut down the virus,” he asserted. “For example, it is one thing to say that you can have in a state that–where the infection rate is not as high, you can have a gymnasium open. It is another thing to say it can be only open four hours a day with X number of people.