Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
How COVID Spikes May Impact Election Day Turnout In Key States
ABC News: Coronavirus Surging In Every Key Swing State As Voters Head To Polls
With Election Day just hours away, coronavirus cases are rising in every key political battleground state around the country, according to an ABC News analysis, a striking reality that highlights the inextricable link between the pandemic and the 2020 race for president, despite Donald Trump's best efforts to refocus the conversation elsewhere. Deaths and hospitalizations are rising as well. (Rubin, Kim and Nichols, 11/2)
AP: Huge Voter Turnout Expected Despite Virus, Political Rancor
The scourge of a global pandemic produced an election season like no other in the U.S., persuading record numbers of Americans to cast their ballots early, forcing states to make changes to long-established election procedures and leading to hundreds of lawsuits over how votes will be cast and which ballots will be counted. Polls were to open Tuesday as election officials warned that millions of absentee ballots could slow the tallies, perhaps for days, in some key battleground states and as President Donald Trump threatened legal action to prevent ballots from being counted after Election Day. (Cassidy and Izaguirre, 11/3)
CNN: Americans Head To Polls Amid Harrowing Covid-19 Surge That Has Nearly Doubled The US 7-Day Case Average In A Month
As Americans head to the voting booths Tuesday, the devastating Covid-19 pandemic looms: surging across the US yet again, setting grim records and forecast to take tens of thousands more lives across the country in the coming months. Experts have warned this bout with the virus will be the worst one yet -- and alarming trends are already pointing in that direction. In just one month, the country's 7-day case average jumped by more than 97%. (Maxouris, 11/3)
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AP: 'Raw Exposed Nerves': Anxious Nation Awaits Election Day
As the traditional Election Day closes in, Americans are exhausted from constant crises, on edge because of volatile political divisions and anxious about what will happen next. Their agony is not in deciding between President Donald Trump or his Democratic challenger, Joe Biden. Most made that choice long ago. Instead, voters arriving in record numbers to cast early ballots say basic democratic foundations feel suddenly brittle: Will their vote count? Will the loser accept the result? Will the winner find a way to repair a fractured, sick and unsettled nation? (Galofaro, 11/2)
The Washington Post: Unlike Previous Lethal Viruses, This One Will Define A Major Election
For at least the fourth time in a century, voters will go to the polls amid a lethal viral outbreak, but unlike previous elections held in the shadow of flu, polio and HIV, the novel coronavirus — and the destruction it has unleashed — will almost certainly define the 2020 contest. ... Two-thirds of the public now personally know one of the 9.25 million people who have tested positive for the virus — a new high — polls show. And even more think the worst of the pandemic is yet to come. (Bernstein and Achenbach, 11/2)
The New York Times: America Picks Its President As It Faces Joblessness, Coronavirus And Anxiety
A nation with nearly 8 percent unemployment and mourning more than 231,000 Covid deaths, where four out of five Americans say they feel nervous about the country’s future, gets a final chance Tuesday to decide which candidate is best equipped to lead it past those daunting numbers. The division and anxiety are evident in conversations among voters in long lines outside early voting places and across browning autumn lawns where warring yard signs pit neighbor against neighbor. Here in the middle of the country, where case counts are surging and college football games were postponed after much angst this past weekend, the worry is all connected, from people on either side of the political chasm. (Searcey, Badger, Cohen and Smith, 11/2)
The New York Times: Caregivers Have Witnessed The Coronavirus’s Pain. How Will They Vote?
Few groups have witnessed more of the virus’s horrors than caregivers — frontline workers who have grappled with the public health crisis while trying to help older people at risk of isolation, distress and, in some cases, death. The deaths of almost 40 percent of all Americans killed by the coronavirus have been linked to nursing homes and similar facilities — indoor spaces crowded with vulnerable adults. ... In interviews ahead of the election with more than a dozen caregivers in Pennsylvania, one of the country’s most important battleground states, they described how their experiences are shaping their political outlooks. (Stevens, 11/1)
