People protest against delegating a COVID-19 vaccine to city workers on October 28 in New York City. Polling, vaccination and mortality data all show that Republicans are the largest group of unvaccinated Americans and, as a result, the worst.
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Image by David Dee Delgado / Getty
People protest against delegating a COVID-19 vaccine to city workers on October 28 in New York City. Polling, vaccination and mortality data all show that Republicans are the largest group of unvaccinated Americans and, as a result, the worst.
Image by David Dee Delgado / Getty
As of May 2021, people living in counties that voted heavily for Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election are nearly three times more likely to die from COVID-19 than people living in low-income areas. area that is now President Biden. That’s according to a new analysis by NPR that looks at political polarization and misinformation currently leading to a significant proportion of deaths during the pandemic.
NPR looked at deaths per 100,000 people in about 3,000 counties across the US from May 2021, when vaccination became widely available. Those living in counties that were 60% or more pro-Trump in November 2020 had a 2.7 times higher mortality rate than those living in Biden. Counties with an even higher percentage of votes for Trump have higher rates of COVID-19 deaths.
This trend is strong, even when controlling for age, which is the main demographic risk of COVID-19 mortality. The data also revealed a major contributing factor to the mortality disparity: The higher the voter turnout for Trump, the lower the vaccination rate.
The analysis only looked at the geographic location of COVID-19 deaths. The exact political views of each person as a result of this disease is still unknown. But the strength of the association, combined with polling information on vaccinations, makes it clear that Republicans are being disproportionately influenced.
Recent polling data show Republicans are now the largest group of unvaccinated people in the United States, more than any other single demographic group. Poll also shows Distrust of official sources of information and exposure to misinformation, both about COVID-19 and vaccines, is high among Republicans.
“An unvaccinated person,” said Liz Hamel, vice president of public opinion and survey research at the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health policy advisory organization that tracks attitudes towards vaccinations. are three times more likely to lean Republican than they are to lean Democrat. “If I wanted to guess if someone was vaccinated and I could only know one thing about them, I would probably ask what their party is,” she said.
It’s not always this way. Earlier in the pandemic, various groups expressed reluctance to get vaccinated. African Americans, younger Americans, and rural Americans all have a significant portion of their demographics against vaccination. But over time, vaccination rates in those populations have increased, while Republican vaccination rates against COVID-19 have stayed flat at 59 percent, according to the report. the latest numbers from Kaiser. By comparison, 91% of Democrats are vaccinated.
Not being vaccinated increases the risk of dying from COVID-19 significantly, According to CDC. Peter Hotez, chair of the National Department of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, said the majority of deaths since May, about 150,000, have occurred in unvaccinated people.
While vaccine hesitancy exists in various groups, Hotez suspects that deaths are concentrated “too much” in communities that are more politically conservative. “How does this make sense on any level?” he asks.
Deadly Consequences
The consequences for individuals are real. Mark Valentine still remembers when his brother called him to say he had coronavirus. Valentine is a retired experimental consultant in North Carolina. His brother Phil, 61, is a popular conservative talk show host in Nashville, Tenn., who often expresses skepticism about vaccinations.
Conservative talk radio host Phil Valentine (right), poses with his brother, Mark (second from left). Phil was skeptical about COVID and the COVID vaccine, sometimes mocking them on his talk show. Earlier this year, he contracted the virus and died.
Courtesy of Mark Valentine
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Courtesy of Mark Valentine
Conservative talk radio host Phil Valentine (right), poses with his brother, Mark (second from left). Phil was skeptical about COVID and the COVID vaccine, sometimes mocking them on his talk show. Earlier this year, he contracted the virus and died.
Courtesy of Mark Valentine
Neither brother was vaccinated, and neither was particularly worried about Phil’s positive result. His brother says he is trying some alternative therapy often promoted in conservative circles. “He said, ‘I had ivermectin, I started it this morning, and I didn’t think it was going to be a big deal,'” recalls Mark Valentine. “And to be honest, I didn’t think about it. it again.”
But a week later, Mark said he received a call from his brother’s wife saying the two were going to the hospital. “Before I knew it, he was in there and I couldn’t get to him, couldn’t talk to him,” Valentine recalls. “His situation is as amazing as you can’t believe it.”
Phil Valentine died in August about five weeks after he announced he had tested positive for COVID-19.
Misinformation appears to be a major factor in slowing vaccination rates. Kaiser Family Foundation poll shows Republicans are more likely to believe false claims about COVID-19 and vaccines. 94% of Republicans think one or more false claims about COVID-19 and vaccines may be true, and 46% believe four or more may be true. By contrast, only 14% of Democrats believe four or more of these claims are false about the disease.
Hamel says that believing many of the false claims has a lot to do with vaccination status. “If you believe that vaccines can damage your fertility, that they contain a microchip, and that the government is increasing the number of deaths from COVID-19, you would think really differently about whether to Vaccinated or not.”
Misinformation creates complacency
Perhaps the most dangerous pieces of misinformation have to do with the perceived severity of COVID-19 itself. The most commonly cited false claim is: “The government is exaggerating the death toll from COVID-19.”
Hamel said that underestimating the severity of COVID-19 appears to be a major reason Republicans in particular have fallen behind on vaccinations: “We’ve seen lower levels of individual anxiety in Republicans who are still unvaccinated,” she said. “It’s a real contrast to what we’ve seen in communities of color where there are high levels of anxiety about getting sick.”
Complacency around the risks of contracting COVID-19 appears to be the main reason the Valentine brothers avoid vaccinations. While not conspiracy theorists, they are staunch Trump supporters. The arrival of the coronavirus just before the 2020 presidential election appeared to be “the most accidental pandemic in the history of the world” for Democrats, Mark recalls.
Despite the media coverage, Phil Valentine doesn’t believe COVID-19 is serious as long as you’re healthy: “He said, ‘The chances of me getting it are low. In the unlikely event it’s me. If I get it, the probability that I’ll survive is over 99%,” recalls Mark Valentine.
Vaccine researcher Peter Hotez is extremely confused by the current situation. A winter spike in COVID-19 cases is under production, and the newly discovered omicron variant has the potential to make things much worse.
He thinks Republicans who are espousing anti-vaccination ideas need to take a big step back. “I’m not trying to change the Republican mindset or the far-right mindset,” he said. “I’m trying to say: ‘Anti-science doesn’t belong in it; it doesn’t fit. … Just stop it and save lives.” ”
Prior to his illness, Phil Valentine sometimes advertised unproven alternative therapies and took a mocking tone toward vaccinations. When his situation took a turn for the worse, Mark says the talk show host realized he needed to encourage his listeners to get vaccinated. Phil told his brother, “”My fear was that because I didn’t get it, other people might not get it,” recalls Mark Valentine. The family released a statement of support. vaccinations, and Mark continued his brother’s talk show to encourage listeners to get vaccinated.
He also goes to his local Walmart to get vaccinated. “The guy came out; he said, ‘Do you have any questions or concerns?’ ,” recalls Mark Valentine. “I said, ‘Yes, I have both, but let’s do it how.’ “
Methodology
Immunization rate data are immunization rates for all people 18 years of age and older, as of November 30, they come from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The number of COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 residents is calculated by dividing the number of COVID-19 deaths in a county as of May 1 by the population of the county. County population data from US Census 2020 Annual Census. May 1 was chosen as the start date of our analysis because that is roughly when the vaccine is widely available to adults 18 years of age and older. COVID-19 mortality data collected by Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University and is currently November 30.
2020 election results data is taken from MIT Election Data and Science Lab.
Alaska does not report election results by district equivalent, so it was excluded from the analysis. Nebraska was excluded from the analysis for not reporting county-level COVID-19 statistics. Hawaii was excluded because it did not report county-level vaccine data. Some counties that have reported no COVID-19 deaths since May 1 may have stopped reporting. These counties typically have very small populations and have a negligible impact on the weighted average. As a precaution, we include all data unless we know they were in error.
All mean values are based on county population. The overall average represents the average of the 3,011 counties included in the analysis.
NPR’s Huo Jingnan contributed to this story.
