Elections and their consequences to life and death in the Age of Corona

It is almost a cliché to note that “elections have consequences.” And indeed, national effectiveness on handling of issues of enormous concern (environment, education, income inequality etc.) is dependent on who the country elects to represent us, both locally and nationally.

It is also the case that our vulnerabilities to national problems are often referred to in apocalyptic terms, particularly in fundraising emails. If we don’t put in $5, health care is dead! If we don’t click on this box, we won’t be able to breathe! While consequences of bad government are often quite dire, we can grow inured to these entreaties, particularly because we know that they are provided as part of a need to separate us from our money. So even when we do help out, because we do believe the basic story, we discount the extreme casting of the situation.

It is also quite human to discount problems that are seen as far off, either in place or time. There has been a moderately successful attempt to link the increased incidence of extreme weather events to climate change, a connection that is quite probably valid. But more generally, our population gets much more concerned about issues with a more direct and obvious connection to their own experience.

But despite this psychological reality, the truth is that when we actually understand a bit about worldwide problems, our choices here and now can significantly affect how we withstand them when they reach here. And this brings me to the significance of November’s elections for our own mortality.

We can believe that we are Fortress America all we want, but in truth, that ship has sailed (and flown, as might be a better metaphor in today’s world). Not only do we share the air and oceans with the rest of the world, but much of our physical and economic ecologies are shared. There is no domain in which this is currently more obvious than in health. Our current national administration blocked many Chinese from entering the U.S., but much of the U.S. has become infected due to people coming in from Europe. And for the future, any Covid-19 hot spot in the world will ultimately lead to re-infection here, even if we find a way to reduce it here.

As health journalist Laurie Garrett has noted, until we can safely and reliably inoculate all 7+ billion people on the planet, we will still be dealing with this plague. And among many other roadblocks to this happening is the need for us to have a government that engages with other nations in a massive, cooperative push to eliminate the disease.

The current administration has shown no interest in this. In fact, it has made a concerted effort to disengage from every international effort, other than isolated trade agreements that it can promote as having some perceived advantage for our country (or at least for preferred industries). There is no reason to believe that a second Trump term would be less averse to active cooperation with the W.H.O., or with worldwide efforts to develop vaccines or treatments. There is no reason to believe that the administration would have any better sense of the international nature of scientific inquiry, or even of the value of our own national standards for public health. We should expect that the C.D.C. and other scientific centers of excellence within the government would continue to be muzzled and degraded.

Basically, we should expect more confusion, more disease, and more death.

The extreme importance of changing who is charge needs no hyperbole. The evidence in front of us, if viewed seriously, must lead us to conclude that removing one party, the Republicans, from power this year is necessary to save many, many lives.