Democrats and Republicans Aren ’t Watching the Same Pandemic

This week’s vice presidential debate was a face off not only between Vice President President Mike Pence and California Senator Kamala Harris, but a head-to-head matchup of two ways of understanding the United States’ COVID-19 pandemic. As Pence framed it, the Donald Trump Administration had been dealt a bad hand, but has risen to the challenge in a way Harris and her running mate, former Vice President Joe Biden, could not have. Meanwhile, Harris declared the Trump Administration’s response as “the greatest failure of any presidential administration,” pointing to the 210,000-plus deaths and more than 7.5 million infections in the U.S. so far as evidence. These divergent narratives underscore just how far apart Americans overall have become in their interpretation of the pandemic—and the idea that people are increasingly rejecting reality for their own preferred set of facts. As an Oct. 8 poll of 9,220 Americans conducted by the Pew Research Center between Aug. 31 and Sept. 7 by reveals, Democrats and Republicans are sharply divided on how well the U.S. has done in fighting COVID-19. They’re also split on whether the outbreak was as big of a deal as it has been made out to be. Moreover, they’re paying less attention to the crisis overall, even as it shows signs of worsening once again. While a majority of Americans overall (61%) agreed that the U.S. hasn’t controlled the outbreak as well as it could have, that belief brea...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 Source Type: news