The Election & Your Health
How the Election Will Impact the Covid-19 Pandemic
A look at what’s at stake for your health
As the country careens toward a presidential election in the midst of a raging pandemic, the dueling headlines on public health and politics are a stark indication that no matter who wins in November, this election will have profound, far-reaching consequences for your physical health and well-being. All this week, Elemental is running a series of stories detailing what’s at stake, from insurance coverage to plans for a pandemic still in progress. Here’s what you should know about the implications of the election on Covid-19.
The United States leads the world in Covid-19 diagnoses, with confirmed cases now nearing 8 million, largely due to a catastrophic failure of the nation’s health system to “quickly identify and control the spread of the novel coronavirus,” wrote David Blumenthal, MD, and a team of co-authors from the Commonwealth Fund, a health research nonprofit, in the New England Journal of Medicine. “The United States did not make testing widely available early in the pandemic, was late to impose physical-distancing guidelines, and has still not implemented either as widely as needed.”
