US vote and Covid-19: What can the past teach us?
The US is in uncharted territory when it comes to voting during a pandemic, an epidemiologist and historian of medicine has said.
In 1918, during the Spanish flu pandemic, there had been a US mid-term election, Prof Howard Markel told BBC News.
But by polling, it had not been that big an issue.
The idea the coronavirus should be allowed to spread naturally through a population in the absence of a vaccine was wrong, he said.
“Why would you rely on a 13th Century methodology, when you live in the 21st Century?
"It makes no sense at all."
Donald Trump’s response to the pandemic has become a key issue in the election.
The president has repeatedly said the US is turning the corner.
But there have been record numbers of infections and rising hospital admissions.