Five years ago, a new coronavirus to which no one was yet immune was sweeping the globe, shutting down schools and sporting events. In March 2020, masks had not yet become a partisan lightning rod — the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had not yet even recommended them. And according to the Pew Research Center, Republicans were ten percentage points more likely than Democrats to say that public health officials such as those at the CDC were doing an excellent or a good job responding to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Over 1 million Americans died as a result of the disease. Today, Covid-19 has become a common and far less deadly affliction. And 79 percent of Democrats — compared with only 35 percent of Republicans — now say that public health officials did an excellent or a good job. The pandemic is over, the world has moved on, but Covid has left deep and enduring scars on our body politic. What happened?