… Lately some commentators have suggested that the coronavirus lockdowns pit an affluent professional class comfortable staying home indefinitely against a working class more willing to take risks to do their jobs. Writing in The Post, Fareed Zakaria tried to make sense of the partisan split over coronavirus restrictions, describing […] Read more »
By order of Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp: The day after Thursday is now Sunday
… Last week, Georgia’s Department of Public Health released a graph showing a dramatic, steady decline in cases, deaths and hospitalizations in the state’s five most affected counties, from a peak on April 28, just before the state’s restrictions were eased, to near zero two weeks later. But on closer […] Read more »
Coronavirus Is Becoming Even More Partisan
After spending much of the past three and a half years out of the spotlight, former President Barack Obama has become more vocally critical of President Trump’s administration. In turn, Trump has called for Obama and his administration to be investigated. In this installment of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, the […] Read more »
The Relationship between In-Person Voting, Consolidated Polling Locations, and Absentee Voting on Covid-19
On April 7, 2020, Wisconsin held a major election for state positions and presidential preferences for both major parties. … We use county level data on voting and COVID-19 tests to connect the election to the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. We find a statistically and economically significant association between […] Read more »
‘Us Vs. Them’ In A Pandemic: Researchers Warn Divisions Could Get Dangerous
As the pandemic moves from public health crisis to partisan flashpoint, the debate over the coronavirus response in the U.S. is becoming increasingly nasty – and, in some cases, violent. It’s not just the clusters of gun-toting protesters at state capitols. In sporadic incidents across the country, disputes over emergency […] Read more »
Crisis exposes how America has hollowed out its government
The government’s halting response to the coronavirus pandemic represents the culmination of chronic structural weaknesses, years of underinvestment and political rhetoric that has undermined the public trust — conditions compounded by President Trump’s open hostility to a federal bureaucracy that has been called upon to manage the crisis. … Public […] Read more »