The New England Journal of Medicine urges people to vote Trump out in an extraordinary editorial

White House press room
(Image credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

The first question at Wednesday's vice presidential debate was why the U.S. has fared so much worse than other countries in handling the COVID-19 pandemic. The New England Journal of Medicine had offered an answer hours earlier, in a very unusual editorial: The U.S. government has, uniquely in the world, "failed at almost every step." The 202-year-old medical journal's editors did not endorse Joe Biden, as Scientific American did last month, or mention President Trump by name, but the message was a clear prescription to vote him out in November.

"The United States came into this crisis with enormous advantages," the editors detail. But "the response of our nation's leaders has been consistently inadequate. The federal government has largely abandoned disease control to the states. Governors have varied in their responses, not so much by party as by competence. But whatever their competence, governors do not have the tools that Washington controls. Instead of using those tools, the federal government has undermined them."

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Peter Weber, The Week US

Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.