It appears that the COVID pandemic will not be a big issue in the 2024 election and perhaps we should be grateful for that. Just three years ago, the entire world was in the grip of a health crisis the likes of which we hadn't seen in over a century. In July of 2020 thousands of Americans were dying each day in the first wave of a deadly pandemic and Donald Trump was all over television alternately telling the people that they could cure themselves with unapproved drugs and bright light, or telling them that the virus was going away and we just needed to open up the economy and carry on as usual. It was a terrifying time and the trauma it caused has been very deep. More than a million people have died from COVID in the U.S. so far, leaving a much larger number of people dealing with grief, loss, financial hardship and the consequences of long-term illness.
It's only recently that it has started to feel like the country is getting back to normal: The economy has fully recovered and there's far more sense of freedom in our business and social interactions. But America may have changed permanently in some respects, and not necessarily for the better. The conspiracy theories that sprang up during the pandemic about vaccines and masks, along with a sense of mistrust in public health and science in general, were not entirely new. But they are having a powerful pernicious effect on our society in ways that will test us severely, especially now that such beliefs have become part of the right's tribal identity.
