GOP voters had higher excess deaths rates after COVID vaccine rollout

The death gap between Democrats and Republicans was larger in counties with lower vaccination rates.

See full article...

 

[marsilies]

This is my shocked face.

 

[Stern]

But how did the Chinese develop the technology to engineer viruses that target political affiliation?

 

[OrangeCream]

I'm trying to understand this line from the study:

Research before the COVID-19 pandemic has also found evidence of higher death rates in Republican-leaning counties than Democratic-leaning counties.

What are they trying to say, that some Democrat voters don't ever die?

Death rate means rate at which people die.

Democrats die at a lower rate, meaning they live longer.

(I'm sure that isn't actually what they meant, but at the end of the day the death rate is 100% for mortals. )

You're measuring death rate over a 100+ year period.

The studies likely were measuring death rates at a far more granular level, likely the week, month, or yearly level.

So the death rate per week is absolutely not 100% for mortals.

Even if you look at a decade of data the death rate isn't anywhere close to 100%.

Edit: Seriously - what is that quote supposed to mean? That people moved out of Democrat counties as they become more frail and are replaced by healthier voters?

No, seriously, it meant Democrats lived longer.

If 2 Democrats died every week and 3 Republicans died every week, then you can say the Republican death rate was 50% greater.

Or, that the Republicans had a higher death rate than Democrats.

 

[Statistical]

Republicans who believe the virus is a hoax or no worse than a cold/flu would be.

Except they aren't surprised they just pretend this is fake news. In alternative facts land nobody dies of covid and in fact more people die from the vaccine so death rates can't be higher for Republicans.

 

[RiptideLA]

It may be worse than this. In southeast Ohio and Appalachia in general, there are lots of registered Democrats who haven't voted for a Democrat in decades (to give you a hint why, they haven't voted for a Democrat since 1968 specifically). Similarly in Florida, older voters may retain party affiliation from decades gone by. You register your political party once, and it stays the same unless you specifically go through the effort of changing it.

If you've ever wondered in polls who those x% of Democrats are who think Trump is the bee's knees, it's not all people messing with pollsters. Some of it is Dixiecrats who refuse to associate with the same party that ended slavery.

So if you use registration data, you'll get some Republicans mixed with your Democrats. Not so much the other way around.

That's a pretty huge assumption about the number of registered Dems that haven't voted for a Dem since 1968. Those voters would be at least 73 years old today (74 by the next election) and most of them are long dead.

I don't think you can say "lot's of". It's more like a very few. And the Republicans have been attracting those particular Dem voters in droves since the Voting & Civil Rights Acts were signed. I don't think there are more than a handful of them alive who hold some sort of pointless grudge against the Republican Party.

 

[CatBus]

But how did the Chinese develop the technology to engineer viruses that target political affiliation?

You wouldn't make that joke if you considered how party affiliation actually works in the South...

 

[SixDegrees]

While I'm sure smaller towns or counties in red states can show a reduction in total 'red' voters from excess Covid deaths, you are correct in bringing up Gen Z. Another 8-9 million just became eligible to vote since the last election in 2020, with more to follow right up to the next election. And yes, they despise the conservative platform. All of it. I give the Republican party another two generations tops before it gets relegated to the dustbin of history.

They already consistently poll below democrats pretty much everywhere. It's why they've doubled down on voter suppression; they know they can't win a fair election.

Their last president "won" with less votes than the loser, and so did another of their party's presidents.

 

[AmanoJyaku]

I'm not sure if this will ever happen, but it would be pretty fascinating to someday see any potential links between a partisan gap in excess deaths and a swing state going blue in any given election. I'm not sure if the data to correlate this exists, or if the effect is strong enough in any one place to actually manifest, but it would be a fantastic (if seemingly obvious) lesson in why policies that actively kill off your own voter base might be a bad idea.

Red states have plenty of data correlating excess deaths and low quality of life to political leanings.

They don't care. People are replaceable, just put the women to work popping out babies.

Edit: Scientific American - just one source of many

 

[Heart of Dawn]

Seriously, what was the Republican play here? To what end was it in their interests to let their voters die of a (mostly) preventable disease?

 

[Wonderful Void]

Read the book "Dying of Whiteness".

"Through "field interviews, research and public-health data" gathered over the years of travel to these states, Metzl found that some vulnerable white Americans would rather die than betray their political views that have become enmeshed with their own sense of white identity."

 

[SixDegrees]

Seriously, what was the Republican play here? To what end was it in their interests to let their voters die of a (mostly) preventable disease?

The goal was keeping the spotlight on Trump and defending him against the truth.

 

[Statistical]

They already consistently poll below democrats pretty much everywhere. It's why they've doubled down on voter suppression; they know they can't win a fair election.

Their last president "won" with less votes than the loser, and so did another of their party's presidents.

Yeah while the President isn't elected by popular vote it is a good high profile national election and a judge of public sentiment at a high level. Only one Republican candidate has won the popular vote in 32 years. If Trump either loses or wins electoral college and loses the popular vote again that will be one in 36 years.

On edit: One not none.

 

[OldPhartReef]

People really shouldn't be either surprised or sorry about this. Ignorance is a killer. Willful ignorance is a Darwin-award waiting to happen. Zero sympathy here.

 

[rm]

155 million people voted in the 2020 election. Per the article, 1.1 million people have died from COVID in the USA (not all voters).

Without minimizing the sheer number of deaths (that's like half the population of the Montreal island), its still a fraction of a percent of voters, so I'd say unlikely to swing a State one way or another... until we have a pandemic caused by a more deadly virus.

Maybe true from a numbers point of view and perhaps I am overly optimistic, but I think watching loved ones die horribly will have knock-on effects. Death and suffering ultimately mean more in these things for those who survive and what it means to them. If you lose family, a friend, see a local business disappear because the owner died or has lost someone. Or maybe more realistically the influence of this stuff on younger people who are already skeptical of older people's decision making. I have hope. I mean not a lot, but some.

 

[PaxTechnica]

Like climate change for the south, I don't like to see tragedy hit anyone but if it has to hit someone I can only hope it most impacts those who through action or inaction make the problem worse for everyone.

 

[RiptideLA]

Its interesting how the anti-vax movement has morphed from a liberal issue to a conservative one or possibly both.. It used to be the crunchy granola types on the west coast were the anti-vaxers because they claimed it caused autism and who the hell knows what else.

You make a good point, but I think you're somewhat off in your assumptions. Here's a study from 2015 about the demographic makeup of antivaxers:

https://qz.com/355398/the-average-anti-vaxxer-is-probably-not-who-you-think-she-is
While 60% were liberal at that time, probably not the "crunchy granola" strain of liberal, who are typically wealthier. From the first sentence of the article:

"A middle age, Midwestern man with high-school diploma, low income and a tendency not to think his vote matters much: this is the identity of the average American anti-vaxxer, according to a survey run by real-time consumer insight firm CivicScience."

In 2015 that description did not necessarily describe a Republican, but post 2016 and Trump it sure does. So your overall point is well taken.

 

[KeillRandor]

What is it with people deluding themselves that the US Republican Party is still merely 'conservative'?

They haven't been since Obama got elected at least, and have jumped of the cliff to the far right after Trump, leading various individual states to pretty much try and become as fascist as they can get away with, with their Federal politicians not being much better.

As happened during the world war we fought about it: As soon as you associate and support the far right fascists, that's what you become.

Fascists always become an association of death, murder and suffering - which is exactly what this is caused by...

 

[azazel1024]

I'm not sure if this will ever happen, but it would be pretty fascinating to someday see any potential links between a partisan gap in excess deaths and a swing state going blue in any given election. I'm not sure if the data to correlate this exists, or if the effect is strong enough in any one place to actually manifest, but it would be a fantastic (if seemingly obvious) lesson in why policies that actively kill off your own voter base might be a bad idea.

I mean, that should be pretty easy to figure out statistically. You should be able to estimate the excess death rate at different ages and across party affiliation (more or less as this study did). Then you can figure out the likelihood of people voting in that age group by the actual turn out. Heck, you can factory in disability that doesn't kill people, but leaves them as not voting (in person, or by mail in).

Some candidate wins by less than that gap, you could be moderately confident that swung the vote.

I don't think you could PROVE it. But if you find, say, an estimated 6000 more republicans died in North Carolina than Democrats, and the average turn out is 50%, and a state wide election had a race where a Democrat won by 500 votes...you could be pretty darned confident COVID and being anti-vax swing the election.

Not that it has happened that way. But there were a number of elections that were swung in 2022 by not a lot of votes. Probably a few of them would have gone the other way if it weren't for a refusal to accept science.

 

[Statistical]

Sure. But I don't understand the point of making the comparison. The death rate is going to be significantly impacted by things like immigration, general health, access to healthcare and housing affordability/availability for seniors. That is a lot to correct for; comparing the raw numbers doesn't seem useful without correcting for factors like these.

You missed the part that the study group regardless of political affiliation had similar death (<15% difference) rates in the two years PRIOR to the vaccine becoming available. So yes they did account for those factors. The greatest predictor of if someone got vaccinated was not race, income, or education but political affiliation. Then in the year after the vaccine being available the death rate for Republican voters in the study rose relative to the Democratic voters. In nominal terms it rose while the Democratic death rate fell. This wasn't looking at death rates over the course of decades but just the years prior to and after the vaccine became available.

I wonder what could be the critical factor?

 

[cruff]

... as they look at their Ivermectine orders. ...

They've apparently moved on from that to bleach and now borax.

 

[numerobis]

Seriously, what was the Republican play here? To what end was it in their interests to let their voters die of a (mostly) preventable disease?

Increase the stock market values, for some.

For others, they believed that lower-status people (in particular, dark-skinned ones) would die more, and saw that as a plus. This was in fact true for a while, until vaccines came out and the partisan divide flipped.

 

[Stuart Frasier]

Interesting. That timeline lines up approximately when more party changers started going from D to R than from R to D. So aren't we just seeing the expected outcome where the older party sees more losses in makeup due to death and the other party sees more relative losses due to leaving the party? The former would show up as a higher death rate than the latter.

Possibly, though white racists started switching from D to R some time before. But it shows up in overall life expectancy as well as mortality rates. So it appears to be genuine, living in a Republican states costs you years of life, and you’ll likely be poorer and sicker while you’re alive.

 

[SixDegrees]

They've apparently moved on from that to bleach and now borax.

Has anyone mentioned to them that using both together has even greater whitening power?

 

[Bunge]

This is such good news.

 

[aapis]

The only tragedy here is that some Republicans did take the vaccine.

 

[TimeWinder]

So we've officially passed the point where COVID-19 is more deadly to Americans than WWII, even adjusting for relative populations (there are now about 2.5 times as many Americans as back in the early 40s). I was wondering when that would happen.

And that "over" in "over 1.1 million" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. We know from excess mortality numbers that a LOT of COVID deaths weren't reported as such.

 

[redbeardthepirate]

Proving once again the survival of the fittest (in this case mentally fittest), is in fact evolution doing its work.

A lot of these republican-county deaths were by choice - basically, long-range suicide. They chose to not be vaccinated, they chose to put themselves at risk, and they chose to die.

The gene pool is probably stronger as a result.

 

[TimeWinder]

Yeah while the President isn't elected by popular vote it is a good high profile national election and no Republican candidate has won the popular vote in 32 years. If Trump either loses or wins electoral college and loses the popular vote again that will be 36 years.

No, Bush the Younger's second term was in 2004, and he won the popular vote.

 

[DarthSlack]

Seriously, what was the Republican play here? To what end was it in their interests to let their voters die of a (mostly) preventable disease?

Because somewhere, somehow, someway, allowing their voters to die off owns a lib or two. As long as a lib is owned, the ultimate sacrifice is worth it.

 

[Statistical]

No, Bush the Younger's second term was in 2004, and he won the popular vote.

Fair correction. Ok once in the last 32 years.

 

[Da Truff]

Its interesting how the anti-vax movement has morphed from a liberal issue to a conservative one or possibly both.. It used to be the crunchy granola types on the west coast were the anti-vaxers because they claimed it caused autism and who the hell knows what else.

It was never a "liberal" issue. Prior to Covid, anti-vaxxers were consider tinfoil hatters or celebrity nutjobs and not specifically associated with a political party. They have never had any support from mainstream Democrats.

 

[Statistical]

Seriously, what was the Republican play here? To what end was it in their interests to let their voters die of a (mostly) preventable disease?

They assumed poutrage over covid action would propel them to a victory. Once the mob got energized though it took on a life of its own. Even Trump got booed talking about the vaccine and then he never did again.

The Republican leadership has only the slightest control over the mostly ignorant mob that they call their base. They can try to herd them in the right direction but they largely do whatever they want like gulp horsey paste and die of covid.

 

[SixDegrees]

Proving once again the survival of the fittest (in this case mentally fittest), is in fact evolution doing its work.

A lot of these republican-county deaths were by choice - basically, long-range suicide. They chose to not be vaccinated, they chose to put themselves at risk, and they chose to die.

The gene pool is probably stronger as a result.

This invocation of evolution is tiresome. There aren't enough deaths here to make a difference, those there are tend to be among those who've already had children, but most importantly this isn't a genetic behavior; it's a learned behavior. There's nothing for natural selection to operate on here.

 

[Statistical]

Or that Democrats become non-Democrats in ways that don't involve death at higher rates than Republicans. Which has also been happening for a couple decades.

And if comparing county statistics, it could be that more Democrats move away from Democrat counties before dying than Republicans. I don't have stats on this, but Republican or swing states with low taxes like FL and AZ come to mind as retirement areas.

They looked at registration regardless of where they died. It also only involved 3 years (two prior the vaccine and one after).