Biden Is Projected To Be The President-Elect. Here’s How It All Went Down.

Earlier today, I told you to wear a damn mask when you go to the polls, and reader Clinton Weir wanted to know … weren’t masks mostly supposed to be useful for preventing the spread of COVID-19 to other people? Do they actually protect the people who wear them, as well?

It’s a super interesting question! And one of those spots where the expert consensus has been shifting in recent months. A lot of this is coming from animal model studies, but researchers are starting to think masks protect the wearer more than we thought they did, initially. For example, a University of Hong Kong study using hamsters found that animals protected by mask material both caught less of the disease and also had less-severe cases of the disease. We’re not talking about perfect protection, by any means, but this is a war of inches, and every bit helps.

Well and the other question is — do voters and interest groups put pressure on lawmakers to make these changes going forward? I suspect voting rights more broadly are going to be a big issue at the federal level if Democrats win a trifecta, but it’ll be interesting to see if states controlled by Democrats make this a priority going forward too.

Yeah, Kaleigh’s exactly right. A handful of states expanded no-excuse absentee voting in response to the pandemic — Delaware, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Hampshire, New York and South Carolina, for example — and another five said the pandemic doesn’t count as a universally valid excuse.