In Midwest battlegrounds, the virus met another concern: the Economy

Kenosa, Wisconsin: When Americans voted in this presidential election, they made it clear that of all the crucial issues facing the country, the coronavirus pandemic towered over the rest. They remained diametrically opposed, however, on how the pandemic reflected on President Donald Trump.

In the Midwest — states that were battlegrounds in the presidential race and where the virus has soared — supporters of Trump defended his handling of the crisis, praised his efforts to revive the economy and echoed his suggestions that the virus’s dangers were overblown.

And Wednesday, with all eyes on the election outcome, new records in Minnesota and Indiana pushed the country above 100,000 virus cases in a single day for the first time since the pandemic began.

Coronavirus update | US adds record 99,660 cases in 24 hours: Johns Hopkins tally.

Those who voted for former Vice President Joe Biden frequently said that Trump’s response to the pandemic had given them one more urgent reason to vote him out.

“We need somebody in office who has a game plan,” said Gabrielle Young, a 30-year-old health care worker in Kenosha, Wisconsin, who said she had never cared about politics in the past.

That changed this year. She said she was disgusted by Trump’s dismissal of masks and his shoulder-to-shoulder rallies, including one he hosted on the eve of the election in Wisconsin, a state Biden went on to narrowly win.

Then, Young said, there are Trump’s false promises of a national recovery from the coronavirus. “Trump keeps saying that the vaccine is ready, and the vaccine is not ready,” Young said. “You’re not giving us hope. You’re giving us false hope.”

In Ohio, where coronavirus hospitalizations are at a peak, Trump triumphed Tuesday just as he did in 2016, sweeping northeastern counties that were once Democratic strongholds. Trump’s supporters said they saw little reason to punish him for the pandemic, which has caused a crisis around the world.

“I’m not as afraid of COVID as I am of a bad economy,” said Ish Soltay, 51, of Avon Lake, a suburb west of Cleveland. His county, Lorain, which was once reliably Democratic, went for Hillary Clinton by just 131 votes in 2016. On Tuesday, it appeared to surge further right, flipping to Trump, according to preliminary vote tallies.

Soltay, a retired critical care nurse who now sells portable oxygen machines, said he had been personally affected by the coronavirus, which infected his son and chipped away at his paychecks in medical sales. But his support for the president was stronger now than it was four years ago, he said, and on the day before the election, Soltay took a day off work to make his views known near an appearance by Biden in Cleveland, two Trump flags waving from the roof of his car.

“In the beginning, March, April, May time frame, I would say corona was a bigger issue for me,” said Soltay, who said he locked down inside his house in the spring, leaving to go to the grocery store and changing his clothes afterward. “By the time I was voting, if I had to rank them, economy was one to me.”

In the Midwest, coronavirus cases have surged dangerously, and hospitals have neared capacity in recent days, leaving voters with even more reason to send a message about the pandemic. Even as coronavirus cases rose in states like Michigan, Wisconsin and Ohio, closely related issues — the economy and shutdowns — were top of mind.

Twelve states around the Midwest added more cases in the seven-day period ending Tuesday than in any other week of the pandemic, a sign of the rapidly devolving situation in the center of the country as infections and hospitalizations continue to spike.

The situation is especially volatile in Wisconsin, which has for weeks been adding cases at one of the highest rates in the country. More than 35,000 infections have been identified over the last week, the most in any seven-day stretch of the pandemic.

As of Wednesday morning, seven of the 20 U.S. metropolitan areas with the most cases per capita in recent days were in Wisconsin.

Still, some Wisconsin voters said that while they were deeply worried about the pandemic, they were unsure whether they should have steered their support to Biden because of it.

Brenda Garcia, 63, recounted all the things she and her husband, who live in Kenosha, have missed since the pandemic hit. They have cancelled three vacations and countless dinners with friends, children and grandchildren. In a few weeks, Thanksgiving will be a quiet affair: just the two of them.

Yet by Election Day, Garcia said she was not inclined to say that Trump had seriously erred in his handling of the pandemic.

“I think he should have taken it a little more serious,” she said as she left a neighbourhood church that doubled as a polling place. “But I’m just not blaming anybody. We don’t know what Biden would have done. Who’s to say he would have done any better?”

COVID-19 spreads faster, more widely within households than previously estimated: US study 

The Midwest’s struggles with the coronavirus reach far beyond Wisconsin. COVID-19 cases have been rising sharply in Michigan, Ohio, Iowa and Minnesota, all relatively competitive states in the presidential race. The Omaha area, where voters awarded a single electoral vote to Biden, has been adding cases at record levels. And in Minnesota, more than 3,800 new cases were announced Wednesday, shattering a record set a day earlier.

In downtown Cleveland on Wednesday, James Williams, 53, was getting off work from his job as a cook at a hotel and heading to a second job stacking boxes at a factory. Wearing a mask as he hustled to catch the bus, Williams said he cast his vote for Biden. His chief reason? “For the world’s safety,” he said, “because of this pandemic.”

Unemployment remains high in Cuyahoga County, and Williams said he had been set back for five months, scraping by with temporary jobs. He said his cousins caught the virus, as did friends.

“People fail to realize the economy is going to be there,” he said. “You can always reboot and rebuild the economy, but you can’t reboot and rebuild a nation of people.”