Trump’s failed response to Covid-19 will continue, unchecked, over the next couple of months. | Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images

Biden’s victory comes too late to stop a Covid-19 surge this fall and winter.

The week before Election Day, Brown University School of Public Health dean Ashish Jha told me something that still haunts me: “In two weeks, [Biden and his team] are going to have no more power to turn the pandemic around than they do today.”

It’s true. President-Elect Joe Biden has defeated President Donald Trump, but his inauguration isn’t until January 20, 2021. Until then, there are no signs that Trump will give up any levers of power early — if anything, the opposite is true, as Trump now contests the election results. So Trump’s failed response to Covid-19 will continue, unchecked, over the next couple of months.

The US’s coronavirus