This is the Tom Hartman program.

Well two weeks and a day or two, we have this business week, next week, and then the following

Tuesday is Election Day. We really need to start characterizing the following week or two

as Election Week, given such a large percentage of the vote is happening by mail this year.

Most states have laws that allow them to start counting the ballots that come in by mail

before the official Election Day, but there are a few states where Republicans have succeeded

historically or recently in passing laws or rules that say you can't even open those ballots

until Election Day, which means that it's going to take days, maybe even weeks to count all the

ballots. This, of course, is part of their plan, but COVID infections now represent the third

leading cause of death in America. This is a very contagious, very crippling, very deadly disease.

And on top of that, there's a growing legion of people who call themselves long haulers.

These are people who are suffering, you know, basically the symptoms never went away.

One of them said, every afternoon at four o'clock, I get hit by a truck again, literally couldn't

get out of bed for weeks and now can barely get out of bed. Screaming nerve pain, difficulty breathing,

chronic fatigue, and that doesn't count the COVID survivors who have now permanent lung damage,

heart damage, brain damage, kidney damage, have had strokes, have had heart attacks. These are the

most common side effect of COVID is not death. Yeah, that happens around 3% of the time,

but the most common side effect are those things that I just described, heart attacks, strokes,

and things like that. Very often people do die from them. You know, the latest estimate is that

there's probably about 60 or 70,000 deaths in the United States in the last eight months

that were not listed as COVID deaths because when the EMT showed up, the person was dead,

and they said, well, what are the symptoms? And wow, you know, the left side of his body

...