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Many on the right and in the national media have framed Youngkin’s attacks on the purported use of “critical race theory” in Virginia’s public school system as crucial to his success. It isn’t so clear that was what made the difference, though, since conservative candidates focusing on that issue in local races in New Hampshire and Connecticut lost.

And while Youngkin used the specter of critical race theory to appeal to the base, his TV ads aimed at swing voters had a wider focus. In those, Youngkin conveyed concern about the state of the economy and the state’s education system more broadly. He falsely claimed McAuliffe planned to raise taxes by over $5,000 per family, and argued that the state’s public schools were increasingly poorly run and unsafe.

Meanwhile, Youngkin played a careful game with Trump — he was careful not to alienate Trump’s supporters, but also tried to avoid too close an association with the unpopular former president.

Though McAuliffe is not technically the incumbent, he was framed as such. McAuliffe’s status as the former governor and Democrats’ current control of the federal government and Virginia’s state government allowed Youngkin to run essentially an anti-incumbent campaign, capitalizing on voters’ dissatisfaction with the status quo.

What the governor’s race means for national Democrats

Youngkin’s win is a surprise, in part, because of the state’s recent blue lean and the fact that he only recently took the lead in polls. In historical context, though, it isn’t so unusual — the incumbent president’s party has now lost 11 of the past 12 governor’s elections in Virginia. (The only candidate to defy the trend was McAuliffe himself, who won in 2013.)

The result certainly looks grim for Democrats, but its importance can be overstated. If Vermont (Biden +36 percentage points), Massachusetts (Biden +33), and Maryland (Biden +33) can elect Republican governors, and Kentucky (Trump +36) and Louisiana (Trump +19) can elect Democratic governors — and they all currently have them — then surely it’s not all that strange that Virginia (Biden +10) can elect a Republican. Virginia gets outsized attention because there are hardly any other high-profile state contests in the November after a presidential race.

To get a better picture of the national environment, it would be useful to have more data. Some more optimistically-minded Democrats, for instance, have pointed to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s margin of victory in California’s recall contest this September. That was equivalent to Newsom’s margin of victory in 2018 — a year Democrats did quite well nationally. New Jersey’s governor’s race was closer than many Democrats expected, though, and still hasn’t been called.

And three factors bode poorly for Democrats in the midterms.

One is Biden’s approval rating. After staying above 50 percent until mid-August, it has trended down ever since, and it’s now at 42.8 percent, according to FiveThirtyEight’s poll average. Basically, it’s been a rough few months for the president, with the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal, the rise of the delta coronavirus variant, new worries about the economy, and struggles passing his legislative agenda. He has a year to turn things around, but his current political standing is weak.

Second, there’s Youngkin’s success in separating himself from Trump while keeping Trump’s base engaged. There have been questions about whether Trump’s coalition would stay home with the former president not on the ballot. But they came out for Youngkin — or, if you prefer, against Democrats — as Republicans’ turnout and margins in rural areas improved. Youngkin also made significant gains in the suburbs, suggesting that well-off college-educated voters who turned against the party of Trump in 2020 were now ready to vote for Republicans again.

Finally, there’s history. The main reason to expect a strong Republican performance in next year’s midterm elections has been the same all year— the president’s party almost always faceplants in midterms. Since World War II, the president’s party lost House of Representatives seats in 17 of 19 midterm elections. Several of those losses were quite large, while the best-case scenario for the president’s party has been single-digit seat gains. Democrats’ congressional majorities are already tiny, so even a small national shift to the GOP would likely lose them the House and Senate.

A poor midterm performance wouldn’t necessarily doom Biden — most incumbent presidents do tend to improve their standing by the time their own reelection rolls around. But it would doom Democrats’ attempts to pass progressive legislation in Congress — potentially for years to come, depending on how many seats they lose. They still have a year to try to turn things around, but it will be a tall order.

HOT DAMN!!!!!!! pic.twitter.com/BVf7S6mL7e

— Daniel “Giblets!” Summers, MD (@WFKARS) November 1, 2021

Although vaccines are the most effective tool for containing Covid-19, the experiences of older adults show that they’re not always enough. Infections after vaccination, known as breakthrough infections, are usually mild, but they have sickened and killed some people. The protection offered by vaccines can also wane over time. Changes in the virus itself have created variants like delta, which spreads more readily and can evade immune protection. That’s why health officials have recommended that vaccinated people continue to wear masks and maintain social distance in high- risk situations, like crowded indoor environments.

It’s not clear yet how much longer such measures will remain in place in schools, but as more kids get their shots, the odds rise that students can go to class without masks.

Why Covid-19 vaccines for kids took so long to be approved

In the early days of the pandemic, doctors reported that adults were most vulnerable to severe illness from Covid-19, particularly older adults and those with preexisting health conditions like high blood pressure and other heart conditions. That trend has continued, and unvaccinated adults continue to experience the largest number of hospitalizations and deaths from the disease.

By contrast, children appeared to be at far lower risk of contracting the disease and seemed to have less severe outcomes, so young people became a lower priority for vaccinations than adults. However, as the vaccines rolled out and more adults gained immune protection, the relatively small number of infections in children started making up a larger proportion of Covid-19 cases.

“The focus was to get a vaccine for adults first,” said Kawsar Talaat, an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, who led a Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine trial in children. “Once the trial in adults was finished, then it started going down in age.”

The initial clinical trials for the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, also known by the brand name Comirnaty, included participants aged 16 and up. Then the companies conducted further trials with the same vaccine formulation in kids as young as 12, which led experimenters to reconsider what dose of the vaccine was needed in young children.

“The incredibly robust immune response in the 12 to 15-year-olds made them think that maybe they didn’t need that high of a dose,” Talaat said. “There was a new study that started to look at the vaccine specifically in kids under 12, and we decided to test different doses.”

Researchers repeated the clinical trials in 5- to 11-year-olds, but with about one-third of the dose of vaccine that’s used in adults. The lower dose aims to minimize side effects and account for the fact that young children are both physically smaller and tend to have more robust immune systems than adults.

“Kids are not just little adults,” said Jennifer Nayak, an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Rochester Medical Center. “Their size is different, but their immune systems are also different.”

Children who received the low-dose Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine, 10 micrograms, experienced an immune response comparable to adults who got the higher dose, according to the Pfizer/BioNTech trial. After the second injection, the trial showed, the vaccine was 90.7 percent effective at preventing symptomatic cases of Covid-19.

The trials, however, included just 4,600 children, compared to the trial in adults that included 44,000 participants. The pool of children in the trial was smaller because the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine has already been administered to hundreds of millions of people around the world with a strong safety record.

However, some complications did emerge. For instance, the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine is not recommended for people who are severely allergic to any vaccine ingredient, or who had an allergic reaction to the first dose. Researchers have also found that some recipients of mRNA vaccines, like the one from Pfizer/BioNTech, may be linked to rare cases of myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle.

The trials in children showed no serious side effects, but some reported symptoms like pain at the injection site, redness, swelling, chills, and fever, with more side effects reported after the second dose.

While the wait for Covid-19 vaccines for 5- to 11-year-olds has been agonizing for kids and adults alike, this is still a record-breaking pace for vaccine approval. The previous record for a pediatric vaccine was held by the mumps shot, which took four years to develop.

Only 18 months have passed since the World Health Organization declared the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, and 11 months have passed since the FDA granted its first emergency use authorization for a Covid-19 vaccine.

What vaccinating children means for the US epidemic

It’s clear that children have suffered greatly from the Covid-19 pandemic. Beyond the kids who have been sickened and killed by the disease, millions more have lost caregivers and family members or struggled to keep up with their education as schools shifted to remote learning. The pandemic has also taken an enormous toll on mental health.

And though almost all children survive coronavirus infections, they can still infect others who are more vulnerable to some degree. That not only threatens to make other people sick, but also increases the chances that the virus will acquire dangerous mutations. So vaccinating children is likely important not just to protect them individually, but to limit the further spread of Covid-19.

Emily Elconin/Bloomberg via Getty Images
A health care worker takes a Covid-19 vaccine card while administering the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine to eligible children at a pediatrician’s office in Bingham Farms, Michigan, on May 19.

Yet the current stage of the US epidemic is different from when Covid-19 vaccines began distribution to adults in December 2020. At that time, there were critical limitations on US supplies of the vaccine, so health officials debated exactly who should be at the front of the line.

Now, the US has stockpiled lots of Covid-19 vaccines, and some adults have become eligible for booster doses. Young children do remain at a lower risk of severe Covid-19 than adults, so health officials recommend that children receive their first injections at doctor’s offices rather than mass-vaccination sites.

“As a mom, I encourage parents with questions to talk to their pediatrician, school nurse or local pharmacist to learn more about the vaccine and the importance of getting their children vaccinated,” said CDC director Rochelle Walensky in a statement.

One concern, however, is that families will decide whether to vaccinate their children, likely along the same fault lines that have defined Covid-19 vaccinations for adults. Age, income, ethnicity, and political beliefs are key variables shaping whether Americans get vaccinated, and some families seem especially hesitant about vaccinating young kids. (Having only an emergency-use vaccine authorization for young kids may contribute to hesitancy, despite safety data backing it.) School districts around the US will also come to different conclusions about whether to mandate, encourage, or remain indifferent about children getting their shots.

“I imagine there is going to be a huge amount of geographic variability on this,” said Nayak.

So far, vaccination rates are highest in older people and lowest in younger people, and if the pattern holds, it’s likely that 5- to 11-year-old children will have some of the lowest rates of vaccine uptake. Getting those numbers up will take time.

Chart showing Covid-19 vaccination rates, divided by age bracket. Mayo Clinic

Covid-19 vaccination rates decline by age bracket.

Another hurdle is that not every child has good access to medical professionals and can easily get to a doctor to receive a shot. Misinformation about Covid-19 vaccines, like the myth that they cause reproductive harm, could interfere with the rollout as well, according to Nayak.

Still, the more people who are vaccinated against Covid-19, the harder it is for the virus to spread. As more children head back to schools in person and more people gather indoors, having 5- to 11-year-olds vaccinated could blunt another winter spike in infections across the whole population. “We’re seeing that in places with high vaccination rates, transmission is lower than in places with low vaccination rates,” Talaat said. “I’m really excited about vaccinating my 10-year-old.”

Researchers are still planning to keep an eye on the children who participated in clinical trials for more than two years, to keep track of their level of protection and to monitor for any potential long-term complications. Some fraction of vaccinated children are also likely to experience breakthrough infections, and over time, protection from the vaccine may wane.

There are also Covid-19 vaccine clinical trials underway in children as young as 6 months old, so even more kids in the future may be eligible to get these shots. But again, even if they gain approval, the vaccines will only make a big difference if kids actually get them.

More than a year after the first Covid-19 cases appeared, the global manufacturing business has yet to recover.

Along with sickening and killing millions and putting stress on health care systems around the world, it’s now widely known that the coronavirus pandemic has impacted access to items people use in their daily lives. From lumber to books to microchips, the economics of Covid-19 resulted in a mass shortage of goods.

In 2020, manufacturers halted production to put Covid-19 safety precautions in place. But between safeguards, vaccine obstacles, and the delta variant, the timeline for factories to get back on track is still uncertain in 2021. The Biden administration has attempted to lessen the impact of these stressors by requiring the Port of Los Angeles — one of the largest port systems in the US — to operate 24/7.

However, this single change is unlikely to undo problems that one expert says are 40 years in the making.

“We allowed supply chains to get away without having contingencies in place, resiliencies in place, and other measures to ensure humanity would never be subjected to this,” Nick Vyas, the director of the Global Supply Chain Institute at the University of Southern California, told Recode.

Some are suggesting shoppers adapt by buying less, but as the holiday season approaches, this may be tough for consumers. Even if consumer behavior changes, experts say Covid-19’s effect on the global supply chain will be here long after countries “return to normal.”

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