Though COVID-19 failed to feature prominently (or at all) in the U.S. midterms, the aftershocks of the pandemic are still influencing politics in the U.S. and beyond. To help us consider the impact of public health emergencies on democracy, in this Talking Policy episode, host Lindsay Morgan talks with George Rutherford, an infectious disease specialist and professor of epidemiology at UC San Francisco, and Kim Yi Dionne, a political scientist at UC Riverside who studies health, politics, and public opinion. This interview was recorded on Nov. 3, 2022.