Democrats support the reinstituting or continuation of COVID-19 mask
mandates, despite the majority of Americans saying they oppose the idea, a
new poll says.

A Monmouth University poll released Monday asked respondents whether they
"support or oppose instituting, or reinstituting, face mask and social
distancing guidelines" in their state at the current time. Sixty percent
of Democrats said they support it, compared with 12% of Republicans.

Overall, only 34% of respondents said they support continued mask
mandates, while 62% said they oppose.

The vast majority of Americans, 73%, also agree with the sentiment that
"it�s time we accept that COVID is here to stay and we just need to get on
with our lives," which is up three percentage points since the same
question was asked in January.

"We asked the same question about accepting COVID is here to stay two
months ago and got a similarly high number who want to get on with life,"
Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute,
said in a statement. "Our working hypothesis was that many people who
support mandates simply wanted consistency in the guidelines. This new
data suggests that is not necessarily the case. For some Americans,
getting on with life means constantly being on guard and ready to
reinstitute restrictions as new situations emerge."

The poll comes after White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci
warned Sunday that Americans "need to be prepared for the possibility" of
restrictions being put back into place due to the spread of the BA.2
omicron sub-variant.

Fauci cautioned that the "same conditions" that appear to be driving the
resurgence of cases in Europe are happening in the U.S.

"It's the greater transmissibility of the BA.2, it's the relaxation of
restriction, particularly in the context of indoor masking in congregate
settings, and also the fact that immunity, due to both vaccination as well
as people who have been previously infected, tends to wane with SARS-CoV-2
� particularly with omicron," he said.

Monmouth's poll was conducted among 809 respondents, from March 10-14, and
has a margin of error of +/- 3.5 percentage points.

Fox News' Julia Musto contributed to this report.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/americans-mask-mandates-democrats-poll