Pro-Trump counties now have far higher COVID death rates. Misinformation is to blame

[marble falls]

Pro-Trump counties now have far higher COVID death rates. Misinformation is to blame
Updated December 5, 202110:27 AM ET
Heard on Morning Edition

Daniel Wood
Twitter
Geoff Brumfiel, photographed for NPR, 17 January 2019, in Washington DC.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/12/05/1059828993/data-vaccine-misinformation-trump-counties-covid-death-rate

https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2021/12/02/gettyimages-1236187025_slide-5ebd5841c7b2e5194a9a4a73b7ca542e1f6088d0-s1300-c85.webp
People protest a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for municipal workers on Oct. 28 in New York City. Polling, vaccination and mortality data all suggest that Republicans lag far behind in vaccination and are suffering the worst consequences as a result.
David Dee Delgado/Getty Images

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NPR looked at deaths per 100,000 people in roughly 3,000 counties across the U.S. from May 2021, the point at which vaccinations widely became available. People living in counties that went 60% or higher for Trump in November 2020 had 2.78 times the death rates of those that went for Biden. Counties with an even higher share of the vote for Trump saw higher COVID-19 mortality rates.

In October, the reddest tenth of the country saw death rates that were six times higher than the bluest tenth, according to Charles Gaba, an independent health care analyst who's been tracking partisanship trends during the pandemic and helped to review NPR's methodology. Those numbers have dropped slightly in recent weeks, Gaba says: "It's back down to around 5.5 times higher."

-snip-

Recent polling shows that partisanship is now this single strongest identifying predictor of whether someone is vaccinated. Polling also shows that mistrust in official sources of information and exposure to misinformation, about both COVID-19 and the vaccines, run high among Republicans.

"An unvaccinated person is three times as likely to lean Republican as they are to lean Democrat," says Liz Hamel, vice president of public opinion and survey research at the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health policy think tank that tracks attitudes toward vaccination. Political affiliation is now the strongest indicator of whether someone is vaccinated, she says: "If I wanted to guess if somebody was vaccinated or not and I could only know one thing about them, I would probably ask what their party affiliation is."

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[Johnny2X2X]

1. County by county still doesn't tell the story

These counties still have some Biden voters in them and those voters are heavily vaccinated. Right now, only about 15% of the unvaccinated are Dems, the rest are Republicans or republican leaning Independents. So deaths are a lot more skewed than this data reveals.

[tanyev]

5. Yep, my very Republican county is over 70% vaccinated.

At least it used to be very Republican. They still control everything, but the county went 51%/47% Trump/Biden in 2020. I'm certain the reason our vaccination number is as good as it is is mostly due to Biden voters.

[Vogon_Glory]

2. We tried, we pleaded, they blew us off

There’s only so much you can do for people who defy good advice and common sense. Unfortunately, it seems that the only way better info can get through to some of these anti-vaxxers is letting them see for themselves as the virus takes down their friends and loved ones.

I hate it. I’m angry at the hucksters and liars perpetuating the BS, but this is what we are reduced to.

[Botany]

3. "the reddest tenth of the country saw death rates that were six times higher than the bluest tenth"

Natural selection
Natural selection is the differential survival and reproduction of individuals due to differences in phenotype. It is a key mechanism of evolution, the change in the heritable traits characteristic of a population over generations.

Of course this isn't real natural selection because most of the MAGA Red Hat Dumb Fucks are no longer
breeding but I am at the point if they want to get their medical/scientific information from Fox, NewMax,
and or Russian disinformation on facebook fine let 'em get sick just don't use up hospital space for them.

Although their stupid acts have now made it much harder to contain the virus because they have become
"hosts" of the virus where it can mutate and spread.

[PJMcK]

4. Who cares?

I stopped giving any empathy to Republicans long ago. If they’re too stupid to live, so be it.

[d_r]

6. I get that most of this difference

in death rates is due to vaccines, which a lot of the right wingers are getting informed from their alternate media to avoid. But wouldn't some of this variance also be explained by age - older voters more likely to go Trump and more likely to die?