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GOP Covid policy is killing GOP voters
https://thewhyaxis.substack.com/p/gop-covid-policy-is-killing-gop-voters
Republican attitudes, conspiracy theories and policy failures have created conditions for the Delta variant to thrive.
It’s well-known, by this point, that the Delta variant is currently hitting Republican states and counties the hardest. In the South especially, vaccination rates are low and mask use has typically been spotty, resulting in skyrocketing case and hospitalization numbers in several states.
But the picture on mortality has been less clear. Deaths lag behind hospitalizations, so the former have been slower to rise than the latter. Covid treatment has also improved since the early days of the pandemic, boosting patients’ odds of survival. And senior citizens, the group most vulnerable to the virus, have high rates of vaccination relative to other age groups.
But several months into the Delta wave and the data are clear: over the past month, people living in the most staunchly Republican counties have been three times more likely to die of Covid than those living in Democratic strongholds. While the disease doesn’t make political distinctions, Republican attitudes, conspiracy theories and policy failures have created conditions in which the Delta variant can thrive.
In counties where Donald Trump got fewer than 20 percent of 2020 presidential votes, for instance, there have been, on average, fewer than 5 Covid deaths for every 100,000 people since July 31, 2021 — roughly the start of the latest wave of death corresponding with the Delta variant. In places where he got 80 percent or more of the vote, on the other hand, the death rate is closer to 15 per 100,000. Across all counties there’s effectively a dose-response relationship between Republicanism and Covid mortality: as the share of Republican voters increases in your county, your likelihood of dying from the disease rises as well.
A few notes on these numbers, before we go on. They exclude the states of Nebraska and Florida, which, unconscionably, no longer report reliable county-level Covid statistics. They exclude Alaska as well, as the state does not report election data at the county level (I’m sure there’s a way to finagle this, but I was running short on time).
Republican attitudes, conspiracy theories and policy failures have created conditions for the Delta variant to thrive.
It’s well-known, by this point, that the Delta variant is currently hitting Republican states and counties the hardest. In the South especially, vaccination rates are low and mask use has typically been spotty, resulting in skyrocketing case and hospitalization numbers in several states.
But the picture on mortality has been less clear. Deaths lag behind hospitalizations, so the former have been slower to rise than the latter. Covid treatment has also improved since the early days of the pandemic, boosting patients’ odds of survival. And senior citizens, the group most vulnerable to the virus, have high rates of vaccination relative to other age groups.
But several months into the Delta wave and the data are clear: over the past month, people living in the most staunchly Republican counties have been three times more likely to die of Covid than those living in Democratic strongholds. While the disease doesn’t make political distinctions, Republican attitudes, conspiracy theories and policy failures have created conditions in which the Delta variant can thrive.
In counties where Donald Trump got fewer than 20 percent of 2020 presidential votes, for instance, there have been, on average, fewer than 5 Covid deaths for every 100,000 people since July 31, 2021 — roughly the start of the latest wave of death corresponding with the Delta variant. In places where he got 80 percent or more of the vote, on the other hand, the death rate is closer to 15 per 100,000. Across all counties there’s effectively a dose-response relationship between Republicanism and Covid mortality: as the share of Republican voters increases in your county, your likelihood of dying from the disease rises as well.
A few notes on these numbers, before we go on. They exclude the states of Nebraska and Florida, which, unconscionably, no longer report reliable county-level Covid statistics. They exclude Alaska as well, as the state does not report election data at the county level (I’m sure there’s a way to finagle this, but I was running short on time).
Graphs and more data at link. It's what many of us suspected and now there's hard data to support this.
Of course some red states decided COVID is over if they stop reporting county data. So Florida, Nebraska, and Alaska are excluded from this study.
7 replies
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= new reply since forum marked as read
Even in the hotspot states, you can see relatively less COVID in the Biden counties in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Texas, North Carolina, Kentucky, etc. since they have higher vaccination rates. 
