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Politicians and officials leading the US response to the Covid-19 pandemic must present economic recovery and the fight against viruses as inextricably linked, after polls at the exit of polls showed a divided nation considered the problems as separate, according to researchers and public health economists.
An overwhelming majority of voters who voted in favor of President-elect Joe Biden indicated that the Covid-19 pandemic was their main problem, while Trump voters were much more likely to be concerned about the economy, according to polls.
“It is possible to stop Covid-19 and save us from social and economic ruin, you just need to have the will to do it,” said Gregg Gonsalves, assistant professor of epidemiology at the Yale School of Medicine, whose work focuses on improving responses to epidemic diseases.
Throughout the pandemic, he said, “economists were saying the same thing as public health: stop the virus.”
Calls for new public awareness come as more than 237,000 Americans have died from the virus, more than 10 million have been infected and the coming weeks are likely to bring the worst outbreaks in the entire pandemic.
Public health officials have said they need to stress both that Americans should wear masks, social distancing, avoid high-risk situations and that no one in public health wants a another economical foreclosure. Dually, they said, the emphasis must be on the fact that the economy will not recover if the virus continues to spread uncontrollably.
“The economy is really, really important to public health officials,” said Dr. Marcus Plescia, chief medical officer of the Association of State and Territory Health Officials.
“All public health actors are concerned about the economic devastation caused by a pandemic,” he added. “But it is the pandemic that is the cause, not the response to the pandemic.”
Economists are also concerned about a divided electorate who saw public health and economic issues as separate. Williams Spriggs, professor of economics at Howard University and chief economist at the AFL-CIO, said his field had failed to recognize the task that lay ahead when the pandemic struck.
“What we can see from the data – it is the disease that has slowed down economic activity,” Spriggs said. “Whether they are told to stay home or not, [the virus] made people uncomfortable congregating in public spaces, getting on planes, staying in hotels. “
Exit polls are often complicated and, even in normal years, only provide a glimpse of how different demographic groups vote. Experts believe that 2020 may paint an even less reliable picture, as many people vote by mail.
In addition, Trump has largely exceeded pollsters’ expectations, raising broader questions about the reliability of polls. Nonetheless, if the current figures hold up after the research has been validated, there is a marked divide in the United States on how to effectively deal with the pandemic.
Thirty-five percent of voters ranked the economy as their main concern, more than double the number of people who ranked the pandemic as the most important problem facing the country. What’s more, people who saw the economy as the main problem were also overwhelmingly split for Trump, 82% versus 17% for Biden, according to polls from the New York Times.
Those who ranked the pandemic as their main problem have overwhelmingly parted ways for Biden, at 82% from 14%. Biden voters were also more likely to have actually suffered the economic and health impacts of the pandemic, where Trump voters were more likely to earn more than $ 100,000 a year and to classify their family’s economic situation as ” better today ”.
“Particularly at the beginning when we shut things down it’s a very bold move on the economy and I think it really hit people,” Plescia said. “But maybe they’ve lost sight of the fact that there’s a reason we’re doing this.”
Some of the country’s leading public health experts have criticized their own ability to deliver complex messages to the public following a disastrous lockdown last spring.
“I don’t think all of us in the public health community have done a good job of clearly messaging,” Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, told NPR News. He added: “Control the virus and we can open up the economy much more.”
Scientists and researchers further hope that the end of a presidency known to stir up conspiracy theories, muzzle scientists and spread disinformation will lead more Americans to a common set of facts. In an analysis of news articles on the coronavirus, Trump fueled 38% of the misinformation claims, making him one of the biggest sources in the world according to researchers at Cornell University.
One of Trump’s main lines of attack was that public health researchers and Biden wanted another lockdown, likening health policies to a “prison state.” Likewise, Trump’s allies tend to position economic and social health as opposing rather than complementary.
Gonsalves described Trump’s strategy as “letting the pandemic run its course and blaming public health for the economic and social collapse [Trump] could have been avoided from the start.
Spriggs said some of the most important issues in the pandemic lie ahead of the Biden-Harris administration. “This disease has been so disruptive, and the real questions we haven’t raised are what happens after,” he said. “If we emerge and the only thing left is Amazon and Walmart, what does that mean?”
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