Lionel Shriver Lionel Shriver

I’m voting to make America boring again

[Getty Images] 
issue 31 October 2020

I just spent £2.50 in postage to bring about one of the last things I want. Specifically, the next-to-last thing I want. If the polls are right (and how should I know?), my absentee ballot will help leave Trump behind as a one-term historical aberration and install as US president an elderly Democratic lifer whose cognitive capacities remain uncertain.

Many an ambivalent Biden voter will share my concerns about victory:

Covid. Who is that masked man? Biden often flaunts his face coverings even when nowhere near another human being, while his party has embraced the mask as a badge of nobility, righteousness and partisan unity. Obliging computer modellers now posit that more than 100,000 Covid deaths ‘could’ be prevented if 95 per cent of Americans always wore masks. These dubious figures can’t possibly be substantiated. Due to ethics concerns and logistical challenges, no large controlled study on how well masks protect others from infection has ever been conducted, so the model’s inputs must have assumed the conclusions (that’s right next-door to, if you will, barefaced lying).

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