Republican Pandemic: Red Covid
now mostly a Republican disease, politics is a risk factor
The worst impacted state - Mississippi - was also the state that the Supreme Court used to overturn abortion rights. States with abortion rights after the end of Roe are those that have best handled public health during the pandemic - they took precautions seriously and their citizens are more vaccinated than in anti-abortion states.
"a single death is a tragedy, a million deaths are a statistic”
- supposedly said by Joseph Stalin
In the USA, the earliest casualities from the pandemic were mostly in large cities with international airports, notably New York City. This is a major reason why the Trump administration declined to react as strongly as it could have. Trump hates New York and New York hates Trump (the only borough of New York City that voted for him was Staten Island, the most conservative of the five). Trump's son in law urged him to ignore the plight of New York City, since it was mostly Democrats suffering.
After the first wave subsided and everyone heard about the tragedy in New York, some of the rest of the country, notably Republican dominated regions, felt this was something that did not impact their lives. More rural areas were lightly touched, at first, and this led to complacency, especially with reactionary media polarizing the problems.
"As to freedom, it is cherished, it is hard to come by, it is hard to hang on to. But freedom without responsibility is chaos, so to those who push the idea that freedom would allow an individual to do anything, anywhere, at any time, I reject. Your freedom ends where my ability to raise my family safely begins. So I would urge every American to vaccinate their children and I would reject any effort to stop vaccinations until someone can show me a scientific reason to do so."
- Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican
www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/12/08/republicans-2022-election-results-coronavirus-00072565
A working paper by Yale researchers recently released by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that far more Republicans are likely dying of Covid than Democrats.
According to the study, which used data from Florida and Ohio counties, registered Republicans and Democrats died of Covid in equal numbers in 2020, but once vaccines became widely available in summer 2021, the number of Republican excess deaths nearly doubled those of Democrats. The disparity grew even wider during the winter of 2021.
Amid skepticism by Trump and other conservative elites, fewer Republicans chose to be vaccinated or to wear masks in public spaces, and the consequences have sometimes been fatal.
These "selection effects" — Republican death rates and Democrats' more even geographic distribution — may help swing other extraordinarily tight electoral districts and states, particularly when turnout increases in 2024.
Republicans' long Covid may well endure.
www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/27/white-house-fauci-jha-covid-vaccines
White House health officials: up-to-date vaccines key to move on from Covid
Edward Helmore in New York Sun 27 Nov 2022 15.45 EST
Fauci said he had been "very troubled" by the divisive state of American politics and its effects on public health.
Asked why he thought the anti-vaccine movement, which had long existed among a minority on the left, is now prevalent among some conservatives in the US, Fauci blamed an expansion and amplification of anti-science, anti-vaccine thinking.
He said it was "something I've never seen in my 54 years in medicine at the NIH (National Institutes of Health) is that the acceptance or not of a life-saving intervention is steered very heavily by your political ideology".
"Why would you ever want to see that 'red' [Republican-voting] states are under-vaccinated and 'blue' [Democratic-leaning] states are pretty well vaccinated and there are more deaths among red state Republicans than there are among blue states Democrats?" he added. "Divisions of political ideology…shouldn't be a reason why you get sick or you don't get sick."
Least vaccinated states have abortion bans, death penalty, high obesity and smoking
www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/24/abortion-laws-by-state-map-clinics
graphic from Death Penalty Information Center:
graphic from New York Times:
from CDC:
In the winter of 2020 / 2021 the next big wave lead to the biggest level of sickness and death, reaching over four thousand dead per day. Fortunately by then, the vaccines were ready and their deployment substantially lowered the deaths (at the peak, covid became the leading cause of death in the country - not even considering the "excess deaths" that were left out of official statistics).
But the winter wave of 2020/2021 was much more a rural Republican than a liberal Democratic pandemic. Complacency led to unnecessary transmission of infection, with devastating results.
Anti-vaccine propaganda led to the impact of vaccination being less effective in conservative counties - ironically, places with less medical care than liberal urban areas (an oversimplification). And in some cases, very sick patients from rural areas were sent to bigger hospitals in urban areas to get more advanced treatment.
The Delta wave in late summer 2021 was more concentrated in conservative counties than liberal ones due to anti-mask / anti-vaccine sentiments.
Now, in early 2022, the Omicron wave is even more infectious. Its "milder" characteristics are for vaccinated people, not the unvaxxed.
Once COVID Vaccines Were Introduced, More Republicans Died Than Democrats
Written by Susie Allen November 15, 2022
Since the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, public health officials have warned that some of us are at higher risk of severe outcomes from the virus, due to factors such as age or preexisting medical conditions. New research from Yale SOM points to another factor that puts people at greater risk of dying from COVID-19: party affiliation. The study finds that excess deaths during the pandemic were 76% higher among Republicans than Democrats in two states, Ohio and Florida. What's more, the partisan gap in death rates increased significantly after vaccines were introduced.
The research was conducted by Yale SOM's Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham and Jacob Wallace and Jason L. Schwartz of the Yale School of Public Health.
From: Mark Robinowitz
Subject: Georgia(s)
Date: March 23, 2022 at 10:35 PM : Mar 23
The news tonight is one of Putin's primary inner circle financial people just quit and fled Russia.
"NFKRZ" (no fuckers) is a youtube channel of a twenty something Russian guy who speaks good English, talking about modern Russian culture. He was very disturbed by the start of the war, not a pundit, more of a Russian hipster. A couple videos about how he was in shock, how he couldn't get his money out of the bank. Most recent one a couple days ago - he fled to Georgia (the country) where he didn't need a EU visa and there's a growing Russian emigre population. I hope all of these kinds of people will be vindicated in their society and able to go home soon and help build a better Russia. Nyet voyny!
——
www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
March 23, 2022 (when we officially surpassed a million deaths in the USA, although the true toll passed that last year)
www.270towin.com/2020-election-results-live/state/arizona
Arizona
Joe Biden
1,672,143
*Donald J. Trump 1,661,686
10,457 - vote difference
28,883 - covid deaths
https://www.270towin.com/2020-election-results-live/state/georgia
Georgia
Joe Biden 2,474,601.
*Donald J. Trump 2,461,965
12,636 - vote difference
36,658 - covid deaths
several other states where Biden won (barely) the covid death toll will make them less of a swing state
Michigan
Pennsylvania
Wisconsin
Virginia
this may narrow the margins and make them more competitive
Florida and Texas
North Carolina
A breakdown of these figures may find local districts where "red covid" may impact the next election, since extremely conservative constituencies aren't going to become liberal voting districts just because some citizens were foolish enough to trust Facebook memes instead of medical experts.
www.reddit.com/r/HermanCainAward/comments/slyemy/map_overlay_of_2020_election_vs_covid_deaths/
Map overlay of 2020 election vs Covid deaths
https://donaldgmcneiljr1954.medium.com/trump-backs-boosters-clearly-someone-did-the-math-for-him-153a2ff62718?source=user_profile---------0-------------------------------
Trump Backs Boosters. Clearly, Someone Did the Math for Him.
Trump is losing hundreds of voters a day to Covid — far more than the margins in the swing states.
https://urbanmilwaukee.com/2021/12/08/data-wonk-how-republicans-are-killing-their-supporters/
How Republicans Are Killing Their Supporters
Right-wing anti-vaxxers help cause more deaths of Republicans nationally and in Wisconsin.
By Bruce Thompson - Dec 8th, 2021
https://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2021/10/30/the-polarization-of-death/
The Polarization of Death October 30, 2021
https://news.yahoo.com/increasingly-republican-pandemic-184318917.html
The increasingly Republican pandemic
Joel Mathis
June 28, 2021
www.pressherald.com/2021/10/19/maine-reports-883-new-cases-of-covid-19-over-a-three-day-period/
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Herman Cain Award
Presidential candidate Herman Cain made the fatal mistake of attending Donald Trump's June 2020 campaign event in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He attended maskless, caught covid, and died in hospital after about a month. The rally was held near the location of the 1919 pogrom against Tulsa's African American neighborhood. Insensitive is an understatement for Trump's event.
www.reddit.com/r/HermanCainAward/ is a site focused on loudmouth anti-vaxxers who die of covid disease. A sequel to the Darwin Awards, perhaps. It's not intended to gloat or celebrate anyone's demise (although some commenters do that), but to highlight those mistakes to encourage vaccinations in the hesitant and other measures to prevent infection.
billboard in Marjorie Trailer Gangrene's district
