Biden Warns About ‘Reckless Behavior’ in Vaccine Speech, Appeals to States to Reinstate Mask Mandates

President Joe Biden warned during a Monday speech on the vaccine rollout that people shouldn’t be engaging in “reckless behavior” right now.

Biden echoed the serious warnings expressed earlier by CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, who said, “We have so much to look forward to, so much potential of where we are in so much reason for hope, but right now I am scared.”

“This is deadly serious,” the president said. “The CDC expressed earlier today, this is not a time to lessen our efforts. That’s what she said. We could still see a setback in the vaccination program. And most importantly, if we let our guard down now we could see a virus getting worse, not better.”

He expressed concern about people “letting up on precautions” prematurely and said that while there’s a lot of good news, there’s some presently troubling metrics on covid cases.

Biden even directly appealed to states that have rescinded mask mandates in the past few weeks:

“I’m reiterating my call for every governor, mayor, and local leader to maintain and reinstate the mask mandate. Please, this is not politics. Reinstate the mandate if you let it down. And businesses should require masks as well. The failure to take this virus seriously is precisely what got us in this mess in the first place. Risks more cases and more deaths.”

You can watch above, via CNN.