As news broke of Joe Biden’s victory, Covid-19 cases continued to skyrocket. The next few months could be almost unbearably dark.

The election of Joe Biden as the forty-sixth president of the United States heralds a massive change in the U.S. approach to controlling the coronavirus pandemic—a shift from a president who has consistently downplayed it to one who has vowed to make the coronavirus response a top priority, starting Inauguration Day. But Inauguration Day is still nearly three months away. Even as analysts and the American public anxiously waited for the final battleground states to be “called,” U.S. coronavirus cases hit record highs—more than 132,000 new cases on Friday alone. The next three months have the potential to turn almost unthinkably bleak: If no action is taken to curb the pandemic in the interim, deaths could total 400,000 in the United States alone by February.

International media, this past week, divided their attention between the American nail-biter and the rolling waves of Covid-19 cases and shutdowns in Europe and elsewhere, as the northern hemisphere proceeds toward winter. While some countries, like New Zealand and Australia, have successfully prevented or deflated ballooning outbreaks, it will be difficult to maintain those successes as the virus spreads rapidly across the globe. The entire world is headed into a tense season. Read more at The New Republic.