But a more fundamental reason for the uneven support of COVID-19 prevention measures may lie in simple math: Despite more than 200,000 deaths and 400,000 hospitalizations in the United States, an Inquirer analysis suggests that in much of the country, the typical person knows no one in either of those categories. (Surveys, including another one by Pew, have reached similar conclusions.)
Six months later, the pandemic is more or less under control in the state. The governor deserves credit for that. But we cant afford any more blind spots. The public needs to keep a close eye on the trends and hold the state accountable when required.
Thats why its worrisome that the Baker administration has provided only partial access to important COVID infection data in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities, even after the governor signed a law to enhance data reporting.
Such lack of transparency and reluctance to disclose key COVID information is not new. Early on, the state wouldnt release COVID infection data by city and town, making it hard to track geographical hotspots. More opacity could have deadly consequences: obscuring the scope and pattern of the pandemic makes it harder for local government officials, epidemiologists, and the public at-large to react to potential hot spots.
In June, Baker signed a broad data collection law that mandated, among other requirements, more information be disclosed about infections at nursing homes, assisted living centers, and other long-term senior care facilities. But the administration is not in full compliance. For instance, the states Department of Public Health is required to report the daily number of cases and deaths for both staff and residents at these facilities, but it is only reporting cases from each institution in broad ranges, such as 1-10 or >30 when the new statute requires precise numbers. Additionally, DPH is failing to disclose the cumulative number of deaths at specific assisted living institutions.
The Baker administration did warn in June, shortly after the governor signed the data reporting legislation, that full disclosure of deaths at nursing homes would take time. But it has already been four months and the gaps persist. The administration has said, via a spokesperson, that the state has provided more data than many other states.
Separately, but related to the issue of tracking COVID-related information in nursing homes, the Baker administration is either slow-walking or flat-out ignoring key public records requests from the Globe.
In June, reporter Todd Wallack filed a request for email messages sent to or received by Secretary Marylou Sudders about nursing homes that had significant outbreaks, like the Soldiers' Home in Holyoke, where at least 76 people have died. The Executive Office of Health and Human Services agreed to provide approximately 800 emails responsive to Wallacks request at a cost of $450, which the Globe immediately paid. EOHHS kept saying it was working on the request but no records were provided for three months despite multiple follow-ups from Globe lawyers and an order from the states Supervisor of Records Rebecca Murray for the government to comply with the law. It wasnt until the Globe threatened EOHHS with a lawsuit that Wallack finally received 69 emails and was told he would receive the rest by mid-October.
In another request, Globe reporter Hanna Krueger asked EOHHS in early April for emails, texts, and any other communication between former Holyoke Soldiers' Home Superintendent Bennett Walsh and HHS officials during the last two weeks in March. Initially, the Baker administration denied the request citing an exemption due to the ongoing investigation at the facility. The Globe appealed to Murray, who determined that the existence of an investigation did not entitle EOHHS to withhold all of the records in their entirety, and ordered EOHHS to provide further response to the Globe. But Krueger has yet to hear from the Baker administration despite repeated follow-ups asking for a response.
The underlying problem resides with our public records law, of course. Without real teeth to it, the supervisor of records has no ability to enforce records disclosure.
Ultimately, this is about accountability. The states early response to the predictable crisis in the nursing home population was halting, chaotic, and in the end, disastrous, the Spotlight Team wrote. Releasing records could make it less likely that the state will repeat the same deadly mistakes.
Editorials represent the views of the Boston Globe Editorial Board. Follow us on Twitter at @GlobeOpinion.
A largescale global trial designed to test the theory that the widely-used BCG vaccine could help protect against COVID-19 will soon recruit healthcare staff and care home workers in the UK.
The University of Exeter is leading the UK arm of the trial, called the BCG vaccination to Reduce the impact of COVID-19 in healthcare workers (BRACE) Trial.
TheBRACE trialis coordinated by theMurdoch Childrens Research Institute (MCRI)in Melbourne, Australia. The trial has received more than $10M from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to allow its global expansion. The Peter Sowerby Foundation has contributed funding to support the Exeter trial site.
The UK joins study centres in Australia, the Netherlands, Spain, and Brazil in the largest trial of its kind. Together, the trial will recruit more than 10,000 healthcare staff. Participants will be given either the BCG vaccine (currently given to more than 100 million babies worldwide each year to protect against tuberculosis (TB)) or a placebo injection. In the UK, routine BCG vaccination was stopped in 2005 because of low rates of TB in the general population.
Professor John Campbell, of the University of Exeter Medical School, is the UK lead on the BRACE study. He said: COVID-19 has killed more than a million people globally, with well over 33 million people acquiring the disease, sometimes in its severest forms. BCG has been shown to boost immunity in a generalised way, which may offer some protection against COVID-19. Were excited to be contributing to the large-scale, international BRACE study where we are seeking to establish whether the BCG vaccine could help protect people who are at risk of COVID-19. If it does, we could save lives by administering or topping up this readily available and cost-effective vaccination.
Previous studies suggest that the Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccine could reduce susceptibility to a range of infections caused by viruses including those similar to the novel coronavirus causing COVID-19. Examining the mechanism by which this may work is part of the trial being conducted by BRACE researchers.
The BCG vaccine boosts immunity by training the immune system to respond to other subsequent infections with greater intensity.
Researchers hope this improved innate immunity will buy crucial time to develop an effective and safe vaccine against COVID-19.
The BRACE trial is initiallyrecruiting care and healthcare workersin the South West of England, who can attend clinics in Exeter. The trial is targeting these professionals because they work in fields with high exposure to COVID-19. The trial is specifically looking at whether the BCG vaccine reduces coronavirus infection or COVID-19 symptom severity.
Professor Campbell added: People on the COVID-19 front line, including healthcare workers and care home workers, are particularly vulnerable to coronavirus infection. Up until now, care home workers have been overlooked by most research. The BRACE trial provides us with a great opportunity to offer potential help to this important group of individuals who are providing healthcare to some of our most vulnerable citizens in important community settings. Id really encourage care-home staff to join us, to help us find out if the BCG vaccine might provide a safe, widely available and cost-effective way to reduce the risk of COVID-19.
In the UK, the trial will be conducted by theExeter Clinical Trials Unitand supported by the local National Institute for Health Research funded Clinical Research Facility. Lynne Quinn, Operations Director of Exeter CTU, said the trial is initially seeking to recruit 1,000 participants who work in care homes and other community healthcare settings. She said: The first wave of recruitment will take place in and around Exeter, and we have exciting plans to expand to other sites across the UK, so we hope to be expanding our recruitment numbers at a later stage.
Professor Nigel Curtis, global lead of the BRACE trial at MCRI, said: We are delighted that the UK is joining this international trial to help determine if we can repurpose an existing safe vaccine to reduce the impact of COVID-19 in healthcare workers, including those working in care homes who are at particular risk.
Participants will be asked to complete a daily symptom diary via an app, be tested for COVID-19 whenever they have symptoms, complete regular questionnaires and provide blood samples. These samples will allow scientists to understand how blood cells respond differently to exposure to COVID-19 and other viruses, with and without the BCG vaccine.
This article has been republished from the following materials. Note: material may have been edited for length and content. For further information, please contact the cited source.
The presidents of two historically Black universities in New Orleans thought they were doing a public service by enrolling in a Covid-19 vaccine clinical trial back in August, so much so they urged their campus communities to consider doing the same.
I said we should inform our communities because I think theres something about teaching by example, said Reynold Verret, a biochemist who leads Xavier University of Louisiana. Were two Black men who rolled up their sleeves.
So Verret and Walter Kimbrough of Dillard University were stunned by the fierce backlash that followed their joint letter to faculty, staff, students, and alumni. Hundreds of outraged commenters flooded their schools Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook accounts.
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Our children are not lab rats for drug companies, said one post. I cant believe a HBCU would do this to our people, said another reply. Tuskegee, Tuskegee. Me and mine arent first in line, said another response.
The episode illustrates the challenges historically Black colleges and universities face as they seek to leverage their legacies of trust within African American communities to bolster lagging Black enrollment in Covid-19 vaccine clinical trials. Their recruitment efforts will need to overcome the deep-seated suspicions many Black Americans hold toward medical researchers, pharmaceutical companies, and the government that stem from long-standing racial injustices perpetrated by those institutions.
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Now, as the four HBCU medical colleges prepare to host Covid-19 vaccine trials on their campuses, theres hope their efforts will have more success.
Weve engendered a level of trust with communities of color that other organizations, quite frankly, just dont have, said James Hildreth, an immunologist and president of Meharry College of Medicine in Nashville. Its imperative for us as HBCUs to rise to this occasion because people need us.
Meharry College plans to begin a trial of a vaccine made by Novavax next week, with Hildreth as its first participant. The goal is to enroll 300 at the site, but Hildreth thinks they can enroll 600 people, mostly African Americans. The other HBCU medical schools, Howard University College of Medicine in Washington D.C., Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, and Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science in Los Angeles, are planning to start their trials in the coming weeks.
By engaging with the four Black medical schools, Hildreth said, they will have individuals who look like them, sitting across the table, having these conversations, and we think thats going to make a huge difference.
As the death toll passes 210,000, the Covid-19 pandemic has laid bare inequalities within the U.S. health care system and labor force, with a large portion of Black workers employed in essential jobs that put them at risk of infection. Black Americans are three times as likely as white Americans to contract the disease, five times as likely to end up in the hospital, and twice as likely to die from it, according to the CDC. Had Black Americans died at the same rate as white Americans, some 20,800 Black people would still be alive.
Yet, clinical trials for vaccines are struggling to recruit from their communities. Moderna, one of the drug companies testing a shot, slowed down its trial after failing to enroll enough people of color among its 30,000 participants though as of last week it said one-third of volunteers were from diverse communities. Pfizer and BioNTech reported that 9 percent of their U.S. clinical trial enrollees are Black and 13 percent are Latino, while some 72 percent are white.
Watching all throughout the summer, you kept seeing stories that say there arent enough African Americans in these trials, said Kimbrough. You had people like Tony Fauci saying thats going to be a problem if we create this vaccine and it doesnt work for Black folks.
Though people are all nearly identical genetically, people of color might respond differently than white people to a vaccine, especially for a respiratory disease, due to social differences such as exposure to air pollution that disproportionately affects Black and Brown communities, or higher rates of chronic diseases such as diabetes or sickle cell.
How we live and where we live impacts how medicine affects us, said Kimbrough. I think thats a powerful conversation that we need to be having.
He enrolled in a Phase 3 trial of the Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine after Verret mentioned in a phone call that hed done the same, through New Orleans Ochsner Health System. The study is double-blinded, so neither the participants nor the researchers know whether they received the vaccination or a placebo until the trial is over. (Because the vaccine doesnt contain any live virus, the participant has no risk of developing Covid-19 from the injection.)
In their letter, Kimbrough and Verret addressed the pain caused by the Tuskegee syphilis study in which Black patients were told they would be treated for the disease but werent and how it eroded trust between the Black community and health care providers.
We understand theyre scared, we understand the history, Kimbrough said, but were not just telling them this, were saying, Look, were doing this.
Outrage poured in nonetheless, fueled in part by a ProPublica story published a day before the presidents letter that found Ochsner had sent Black patients infected with coronavirus home to die despite the threat they could spread the disease to other people.
To Tevon Blair, a 2018 Dillard graduate, part of what made the letter unpalatable was the absence of predominantly white local universities such as Loyola and Tulane.
The red flag in this vaccine trial is that it is not a city-wide partnership with other colleges, Blair tweeted.
Myles Bartholomew, 22, a 2020 Xavier graduate who is pursuing his doctoral degree at Brown University in molecular biology, cellular biology and biochemistry, said that from a researchers point of view, he understood the importance of encouraging Black people to take part in clinical trials and said the presidents were acting unselfishly.
And then from a students perspective, theres a lot of panic and trepidation about anything related to Covid right now, Bartholomew said. He said he would not enroll in a clinical trial for a Covid-19 vaccine and he understands why other Black people wouldnt either due to distrust of medical research.
Those horror stories are something that is part of our history as African Americans, so wed be completely naive to ignore the precedents that have been set, he said.
The presidents responded to the social media criticism.
There was some misinformation that was being exaggerated, said Verret. The suggestion that there was money being paid to me or Dr. Kimbrough? No. That there was money paid to Xavier. No. That Xavier was requiring that all students be in the trial. No. He added that any of the standard clinical trial compensation he received participants are paid a nominal sum for their time he would donate to his parish.
The presidents letter may have helped make some headway in aiding recruitment, said Julia Garcia-Diaz, the principal investigator of the clinical trial at Ochsner. After it went out, she received an email from a woman in her late 60s who said she read the presidents note and wanted to sign up.
Not only was she elderly and African American, but she was a female also, said Garcia-Diaz. She ticked all sorts of boxes because women are also underrepresented in clinical trials.
Kimbrough said if he were to rewrite the letter, he would have addressed it to the general public rather than just his and Xaviers campus communities.
Thats a good lesson in terms of messaging, he said.
The HBCU medical schools have been working to make sure they get the messaging right as they address peoples skepticism. Their outreach includes interacting with faith-based organizations and participating in virtual town halls, like one hosted in September by Howard Universitys radio station and The Black Coalition Against Covid-19.
The major concern that people are expressing is the question, Am I being experimented upon? David Carlisle, the president of Drew and an internist, said during the town hall. I can assure individuals that this vaccine when you are taking it to fight Covid-19 is not an experiment that is being directed against the African American community.
He added that anyone considering enrolling should first ask their doctor if they should take this vaccine, why, and is this vaccine safe for them?
At Morehouse, Valerie Montgomery Rice, the president and an obstetrician and gynecologist, is no stranger to recruiting diverse populations into clinical trials. When she helped run a clinical trial for a birth control pill at the University of Kansas in the 1990s, her site was commended for recruiting the highest percentage of minority women in the country. She said she is confident 60% to 70% of the people enrolled in the vaccine trial on her campus will be people of color, because Morehouse has long cared for the community.
The benefit that is with an HBCU medical college is that we deal with these issues everyday with our community. We are more culturally sensitive and more culturally aware, said Montgomery Rice. We have the trust of the community and weve earned that trust.
Health officials tallied 66 new COVID-19 cases across the Northland on Sunday.
Fifty-one more people tested positive for the virus across Northeastern Minnesota as of Oct. 11, according to data from the Minnesota Department of Health.
Of the new cases, 31 were diagnosed in St. Louis County; 13 are in Itasca County; four were recorded in Aitkin County; three were recorded in Carlton County. Cook, Koochiching and Lake counties had no new cases on Sunday.
Statewide, Minnesota added 1,450 newly reported cases, and another 29,755 tests were completed. This puts the state's single-day testing positivity rate at 4.9%.
There were 10 newly reported deaths due to COVID-19 statewide; none were residents of the Northland.
Fifteen more people tested positive for the virus in Northwestern Wisconsin on Sunday. Douglas County recorded six cases, according to the Wisconsin Department of Health Services. Ashland County also had six new cases. Three more residents of Bayfield County tested positive.
Statewide, Wisconsin reported 2,676 more people with COVID-19, and 10,247 more tests have been completed. This sets the state's single-day positivity rate at 26%.
Seven more people have died due to COVID-19-related illness statewide in Wisconsin; none were residents of Northwestern Wisconsin.
'We've been really good': places of worship say COVID-19 protocols are working WOAI
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Anchorage health officials said Friday that they are investigating a cluster of coronavirus infections linked to a youth hockey tournament this month that drew teams from around Alaska and several hundred people.
More than 300 players, coaches and fans attended the Termination Dust Invitational hosted by the Anchorage Hockey Association at the Ben Boeke and Dempsey Anderson arenas over a three-day period last weekend, officials said. Teams came from Anchorage, Eagle River, Chugiak, Wasilla, Palmer, Kenai, Soldotna, Fairbanks and Juneau.
It wasnt immediately clear how many people have tested positive for COVID-19 in conjunction with the tournament. Municipal health officials did not provide any specifics at a briefing Friday.
Tournament organizers said they first learned of a positive case on one of the teams on Monday and said they knew of two teams with a positive case each.
Alaskas COVID-19 daily case counts are rising steeply, especially in Anchorage. Health officials blame community spread, especially in gatherings outside households, as the principal driver. Sports events are starting to show the disruptive reach of the virus in quarantines and cancellations.
The Alaska State Hockey Association said Friday there have been multiple positive cases among players, parents and coaches involved with teams in multiple parts of the state.
We are barely several weeks into the fall season and there have been multiple positive cases, in several areas of the State, with players, parents and coaches, Anna Culley, the associations COVID-19 chairman, said in a Facebook post.
Ben Boeke Ice Arena. (ADN archive, 2020)
The Termination Dust participants who tested positive Monday must have had the virus before the tournament started, said Theresa Austin, president of the Anchorage Hockey Association.
If the incubation period for the virus is five to seven days, that means there were infected people in attendance at the tournament that had no idea they were infected, Austin said Friday.
Health officials are urging any participants experiencing COVID-19 symptoms to isolate from others at home for 10 days and get tested. People not experiencing symptoms should quarantine at home for two weeks except to get tested.
Contact investigations indicate significant close contact in indoor spaces, including locker rooms, with inconsistent use of face coverings, officials said in a statement.
Austin said the Anchorage Hockey Association worked with the municipality before the season started to develop a COVID-19 mitigation plan that included limiting spectators to parents only and holding attendance at rinks to 25% of capacity or less.
We have done everything we possibly could do, including our sanitizing and cleaning of all surfaces, she said. But also I believe we were probably leading the way as far as hockey was concerned.
Asked at a briefing Friday if the city planned to close rinks, Anchorage Mayor Ethan Berkowitz said its possible the city could decide some activities are too risky to support, but people also need physical activity.
Its just a continual reminder of how pervasive COVID is and how it can strike at any time, Berkowitz said, after saying he was encouraged by the steps the hockey association took to reduce the spread of the virus.
Last week, a few days before the tournament began, the association sent hockey families an email explaining procedures to minimize exposure to the virus. Participants were asked to send a list of people attending to help with contact tracing in case of an outbreak.
They were also asked to avoid walking between the rinks, stay at least 6 feet from non-household members, and follow social-distancing stickers if next to the glass surrounding the rink.
All children will be required to be with their family, the email said. They should not be running around the rink or left at the rink without a guardian.
At least one participant at the tournament said they saw many people wearing masks, especially early in the tournament, but many families ignored social-distancing stickers at Dempsey, where the only way to see the action on the ice was to crowd against the glass. Children ran around unsupervised. Sundays championship looked like a normal hockey game. There was no one visibly enforcing any rules.
Asked if the association tried to enforce the rules, Austin likened the situation to being at Fred Meyer or Walmart, where people ignoring mask requirements arent generally confronted. Its not like event organizers were going to physically remove people from the rink, she said. What, ask them all if theyre all in the same household or please give yourselves enough space?
The cluster was reported Wednesday, according to Janet Johnson, Anchorage Health Department epidemiologist. Late Tuesday, an Anchorage pediatrician shared testing and quarantine recommendations with parents on social media as COVID is starting to hit the hockey community.
The municipality decided to announce the cluster Friday due to the sheer number of people involved and the pressure that the ongoing case surge is already putting on contact tracing. The Alaska Department of Health and Social Services is helping with contact tracing, which helps control the spread of the virus by finding people who need to quarantine or get tested.
The city reported 725 new cases in the last 10 days, people still within the infectious period, Johnston said. There are 95 people on a list of contacts within the past week who still havent been called by busy public-health workers. After a week in the community, state health officials say, its practically useless to try to limit a potentially infected persons movements.
The citys health department director, Heather Harris, recommended hockey teams and programs follow best practices for COVID-19 protocols.
The Alaska Department of Health and Social Services on Friday announced that doctors from the state and Anchorage health departments this week strengthened their guidance, and now recommend all youth athletes wear masks when theyre playing or competing even during vigorous activity.
The Anchorage School District this week reported that 14 teams were undergoing 14-day quarantine periods due to potential virus exposure from a teammate or coach. The district also issued a two-week stop to high school volleyball after multiple teams at a handful of schools reported COVID-19 illness, related symptoms or exposure.
At least two youth hockey associations the South Anchorage Hockey Association and the Alaska Oilers Hockey Association decided to shut down operations in Anchorage for the weekend. They could be back on the ice as early as Monday, according to Facebook posts by each group.
The Anchorage Hockey Association has shut down for two weeks, Austin said.
Most children who contract COVID-19 have mild, moderate or no symptoms and recover within one or two weeks, officials say. But those with medical conditions are at higher risk for severe illness.
Symptoms can include: fever (higher than 100.4); dry cough; shortness of breath; chills; decreased appetite; diminished sense of taste or smell; diarrhea; fatigue; headache; muscle/joint aches; nausea, rash; runny nose; or sore throat. Symptoms may appear two to 14 days after exposure.
The previous most recent exposure location was the Brother Francis Shelter, associated with a large outbreak in the citys homeless population.
Daily News reporter Beth Bragg contributed to this story.
Trump and Biden debate in Cleveland on Sept. 29. (Morry Gash-Pool/Getty Images)
Pew Research Center conducted this study to understand how Americans view the upcoming 2020 presidential election and the presidential candidates. For this analysis, we surveyed 11,929 U.S. adults, including 10,543 registered voters, during the last week of September and the first week of October 2020. The survey was in the field when Trump announced, early on the morning of Oct. 2, that he and first lady Melania Trump had contracted COVID-19.
Everyone who took part in this survey is a member of Pew Research Centers American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. This way nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories. Read more about the ATPs methodology.
Here are the questions used for the report, along with responses, and its methodology.
The 2020 presidential campaign has been repeatedly rocked by seismic events from the outbreak of a devastating pandemic to President Donald Trump contracting COVID-19. Yet in at least two important respects, not much has changed: Joe Biden continues to hold sizable advantages over Trump on most major issues and key personal traits, as well as in overall voter preferences. And voters continue to be highly focused on the election and attach great importance to its outcome.
With less than a month to go before the election, a majority of registered voters (57%) say they are very or somewhat confident in Biden to handle the public health impact of the coronavirus, while 40% express a similar level of confidence in Trump. In June, Biden held a narrower, 11 percentage point lead on handling the coronavirus outbreak (52% Biden, 41% Trump).
At a time of deep political divisions and partisan antipathy, voters are far more likely to express confidence in Biden than Trump to unify the country. Half of voters (50%) say they are confident in Biden to bring the country closer together, compared with just 30% who express confidence in Trump.
The new survey by Pew Research Center, conducted Sept. 30-Oct. 5 among 11,929 U.S. adults, including 10,543 registered voters, finds that Biden maintains an overall lead in voter preferences: 52% of registered voters say if the election were held today, they would vote for Biden or lean toward voting for him, while 42% support or lean toward voting for Trump. Another 4% of voters back Libertarian Jo Jorgensen, while 1% support Green Party candidate Howie Hawkins in the 2020 election. (See detailed tables for full demographic breaks on voter preferences.)
The survey was in the field when Trump announced on Twitter, early on the morning of Oct. 2, that he and first lady Melania Trump had contracted COVID-19. There are no significant differences in voter preferences, or in confidence in the two candidates to handle the impact of the coronavirus, before and after his announcement.
Trumps handling of the nations economy remains a relative strong point. About half of voters (52%) express confidence in Trump to make good decisions about economic policy, one the highest shares expressing confidence in the president on any of the six issues on the survey. However, about as many voters (51%) have confidence in Biden on the economy.
Since summer, there has been some improvement in views of the nations economy. Among all voters, 35% say economic conditions are excellent or good, up from 28% in June. However, this change has come almost entirely among Trump supporters. And the gap in economic perceptions, already wide, has grown much wider. Two-thirds (67%) of Trump supporters now say that economic conditions are excellent or good, compared with 51% who said this in June. Just 11% of Biden supporters view economic conditions positively, which is little changed from four months ago (9%).
The survey finds that voters view Biden much more positively than Trump for compassion, honesty and being a good role model. Nearly twice as many voters say compassionate describes Biden very or fairly well than say it applies to Trump (67% vs. 34%). More than half of voters (53%) say Biden is honest, compared with 35% who describe Trump as honest. And far more voters say Biden is a good role model (54% vs. 28%).
The gap is narrower on other personal attributes. Biden holds a narrow 6-point edge in courageous (54% Biden, 48% Trump); slightly more say Trump than Biden is mentally sharp (50% Trump, 46% Biden). Among six personal traits included, Trump holds his widest edge in standing up for his beliefs: 69% say this describes Trump very or fairly well, compared with 61% who say it describes Biden well.
The share of Biden supporters who back him strongly has increased since August, though he still trails Trump in strong support. A 57% majority of voters who favor Biden say they support him strongly. Biden drew strong backing from fewer than half of his supporters (46%) two months ago. About two-thirds of those who back Trump (68%) say they support him strongly.
As was the case in the summer, voters preferences regardless of whom they favor remain very much centered on Trump. Just 36% of Biden voters view their vote more as an expression of support for the former vice president; 63% view it as vote against Trump. By contrast, 71% of Trump supporters say their vote is a vote for Trump. These views have changed only modestly since June.
The supporters of both candidates remain highly engaged in the election. Identical shares of registered voters who favor Trump and Biden (71% each) say they have given a lot of thought to the candidates running for president. And nearly eight-in-ten voters (78%) again, comparable majorities of both candidates supporters say it really matters who wins.
While voters on both sides share a sense of the importance of the election, they also share concern about the countrys future if the opposing candidate wins. Fully 89% of Trump supporters say that if Biden wins, they not only would be very concerned over the countrys direction, they believe it would lead to lasting harm for the country. A nearly identical majority of Biden supporters (90%) say Trumps election would result in lasting harm to the United States.
And voters who support both Trump and Biden say their differences extend beyond policies to disagreements over core values. Overwhelming shares of voters who support each candidate say that, when asked to think about those who favor their opposing candidate, they not only have different views on politics and policies, they also have fundamental disagreements on core American values and goals.
Roughly eight-in-ten of those who support Biden (80%) and Trump (77%) say they fundamentally disagree about core values; only about one-in-five say their differences are limited to politics and policies.
However, there is a widespread sense among voters that if their candidate wins the election, the next president should primarily focus on the concerns of all Americans, not just those who voted for him. This view like the belief that the country may face lasting harm if the opposing candidate wins is shared widely among the supporters of both candidates. Fully 89% of Biden supporters and 86% of Trump supporters say that if their candidate is victorious, he should focus primarily on the concerns of all Americans, even if it means disappointing some of his supporters.
American society has long portrayed strength as the opposite of disability and feminization, Wool says. Those go together, and are seen to be incapacitating. This is relevant in the case of Donald Trump.
As a patient, Trump has physical traits that place him among the riskiest categories for dying from COVID-19. He is also emotionally brittle, requiring constant validation and reassurance. But as his niece Mary Trump recently wrote, among Trumps family, weakness was the greatest sin of all. So, in lieu of actual strength, Trump excels at performing a specific masculinized version of it, in which aggression, volume, stubbornness, overconfidence, and mockery are stand-ins for might. This is a man who sees wounded veterans and casualties of war as suckers and losers. Hes a caricature of masculinity, says Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, an emerita disability scholar at Emory University.
Read: Trump: Americans who died in war are losers and suckers
But the leaky nature of metaphor allows displays of strength to be mistaken for its presence. Strongman characterizations seem to revolve around the dispositional, temperamental features of a leader, says Martha Lincoln, a medical anthropologist at San Francisco State University, but I think theres some magical thinking about the physical resilience of such a person too. Even when Trump himself fell sick, he and his supporters couched his experience in the language of strength, victory, and courage. Dont let it dominate you, he said in a video.
This strength-centered rhetoric is damaging for three reasons. First, its a terrible public-health message. It dissuades people from distancing themselves from others and wearing a mask, and equates those measures with weakness and cowardice. The more you personify the virus, the more one version of heroism is to ignore it, says Semino. When people take that idea to extremes, they say, Im strong. Im not going to be cowed by this.
Second, it ignores the more than 210,000 Americans who have died from COVID-19, and the uncounted thousands who have been disabled. Such dismissals are already common. In recent years, the ideologies of eugenics, where if youre sick, its your own fault and you dont deserve support, [have] become more and more blatant, says Pamela Block, an anthropologist at Western University. As the pandemic progressed, many saw the deaths of elderly people, or those with preexisting conditions, as acceptable and dismissible. And as COVID-19 disproportionately hit Black, Latino, Indigenous, and Pacific Islander communities, people who believed in the idea of white supremacy felt like the virus was doing their work for them, and could promote the idea that theyre genetically stronger, Block adds. One of Trumps supporters recently predicted that the president would beat COVID-19 because of his god-tier genetics; Trump himself recently told a largely white audience that they have good genes before warning about incoming Somalian refugees.
