An elementary school student prepares to self-administer a COVID-19 test in a frame from a promotional video by Ginkgo Bioworks, which distributes "pooled testing" systems to schools around the country.
In March 2020, when the world seemingly shut down because of the COVID pandemic, many of us didn’t know what to expect or how things were going to play out.
Arizona Republican strategist Barrett Marson says since that time, at least in Arizona, people started paying more attention to what the government was doing.
“Government probably never meant so much to people as it did during COVID. Whether it was a good thing or a bad thing, right? Whether it was restrictions or school and business closures, whether it was the pandemic assistance that the federal and some state governments offered up. So, I really think people realized how important government writ large was in their lives,” Marson said.
That attention to government and COVID may have another effect, according to Lara Brown, PhD, a Washington, DC based political scientist.
“The governmental policies associated with it tended to amplify our partisan differences rather than diminish them, “ Brown said.
Even though COVID was years in the rear-view mirror, it still came up on the presidential campaign trail last year. Then candidate Donald Trump brought it up during his debate with Joe Biden.
“We got hit with COVID, we did a lot to fix it. I gave him an unbelievable situation with all of the therapeutics and all of the things we came up with, we gave him something great,” Trump stated.
Dr. Brown said the public’s politics and reaction to COVID, and the continuing fallout out was different from other crises the nation has faced.
“You know, typically in American politics, we think about a crisis bringing the country together. We call it in the world of polling the rally round the flag effect. This idea that everyone kind of drops their differences, comes together, supports especially the President, and then rallies to find a solution and a unified path forward,” she explained.
That can be seen on social media as recently as this weekend. Supporters of President Trump pushed back on “No Kings” protestors, citing mask mandates, lockdowns, and other actions that happened during the early days of COVID as examples of a king. They overlooked the fact that many of those things happened while Trump was still in his first term.
“We are in this world where, irrespective of your experience with COVID the party platforms were really what won out,” Brown said.
But she also said not everything about politics and the country since COVID was negative.
“During the early parts of industrialization, everyone moved out of the homes, they moved into offices, they moved into cites and despite the fact that technology allows us to be almost anywhere we haven’t really moved out of that industrial pattern and I do think if there is a positive from COVID its that it will allow us to reconnect with our communities and take us home which I think we need,” Brown said.
From an engagement standpoint, Arizona strategist Marson said COVID had some positives.
“People have their lives to live, I mean, they’ve got to get their kids to volleyball and they’ve got to pay their bills and they’ve got to figure out if they are going to go someplace on summer vacation, so people sort of went back to living their lives. But I do believe that they remain a bit more in tune with what government was doing, even if it came from your own, various political perspective,” he explained
In Arizona, the politics of COVID does not come up every day on the floor of the legislature, but it is still felt with bills that limit how the Governor can declare emergencies and limits on vaccine mandates.
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