Republicans Are Killing Republicans

Last week’s column pointed out the considerable uncertainty currently surrounding the pandemic, particularly due to the recent surge of the omicron variant. Compared to earlier variants, including delta, omicron appears to be far more infectious but considerably less lethal.

Adding to the uncertainty are the early research results, some of which suggest that the vaccines are less effective against omicron. Finally, the CDC has not yet published its estimates of death rates with and without vaccination for the period beyond December 4, 2021. On December 4th, the delta variant was still dominant.

Despite this uncertainty, last week a group of blue states announced that they were ending or cutting back on their mask mandates. Several news reports suggested this decision reflects progress against the pandemic. No doubt it also reflects weariness with the measures used to reduce the number of infections, hospitalizations, and deaths due to the pandemic.

The graph below shows the percentage of each state’s residents that have died from COVID-19 since the start of last year. I chose January first of 2021 as the starting date because that was around the time when the highly effective vaccines started to become available. In comparison to 2020, more had been learned about the disease, how it spread, and what was effective in limiting its spread.

As a measure of partisan orientation of the states, I used the percentage of the two major parties’ presidential election vote that went to Joe Biden. Thus, states shown on the left are more Republican; those on the right more Democratic.

Finally, the states recently announcing the end of their mask mandates are shown with a box around their point. With the exception of Nevada (a competitive state), these states are strongly Democratic. They are in the North East or the Pacific coast. Again with exception of Nevada, they are among the states with the lowest death rates.

As the graph above shows, there is clearly a relationship between a state’s political partisan preference and its covid rate: the lower the state’s vote for Biden the higher the death rate tends to be. Consider the next chart which shows the number of deaths since the start of 2021 as a percentage of the population. The second column shows the death rate for the entire nation. On average, .0.167% of Americans died during this period.

The first column shows the average death rate in states where the Donald Trump vote in November 2021 was 60% or better. The fourth shows the average death rate where Biden got 60% or more. The third column shows the death rate for Wisconsin.

The next chart converts these death rates into deaths per capita. If every state had reduced its death rate to the blue state average, roughly 167,000 lives would have been saved during the period of slightly more than a year.

On average, residents of red states died of covid at a rate 65% greater than residents of blue states. A recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll asked people whether they are worried they will personally get seriously sick from the coronavirus. Of those in the sample who were vaccinated, 52% said yes, compared to 42% of the unvaccinated.

In reality the respondents had it exactly backwards. According to the most recent analysis from the CDC, the probability of an unvaccinated person dying from covid was 14-20 times higher than that of someone completely vaccinated.

Following the U. S. Supreme Court decision against Biden administration plans requiring that employees of large companies be vaccinated, Carhartt announced that it would continue the requirement. The manufacturer of clothing that is popular with blue color workers stated that it made the decision “as part of our long-standing commitment to workplace safety.” This announcement led to calls for a consumer boycott.

Such as this, according to Breitbart:

“Good luck implementing your tyranny, morons,” tweeted lawyer Jenna Ellis, who served as a senior legal adviser and counsel to former President Trump. “You picked the wrong demographic.

There is a strong market for vaccine skeptics, particularly those that can claim some technical expertise. One who has been particularly prominent recently is Robert Malone, appearing on numerous right-wing interview shows. Among his assertions:

Regarding the genetic COVID vaccines, the science is settled. They’re not working. They are not completely safe.

An article in the Atlantic suggests that Malone’s hostility to the vaccines stems from his belief that he has not been given proper credit for his early work on mRNA technology.

A substantial ecosystem has grown up around opposition to tools that can reduce sickness and death caused by the covid virus. For those intent on putting others at risk, it has often led to prosperity, generating donations, developing audiences for media enterprises, and offering a path forward for ambitious politicians. However, its effect on its true believers has been devastating.