Posted on 07/25/2023 1:54:33 PM PDT by nickcarraway
A political gap in excess deaths widened after COVID-19 vaccines arrived, study says BY BILL CHAPPELL
A new study finds a gap in excess deaths opened between Republicans and Democrats in 2021, after vaccine access was widened to all adults. Here, a Walgreens worker prepares vaccine shots for school staff in Dayton, Ohio, in February 2021. Image: Megan Jelinger/AFP via Getty Images The pandemic inflicted higher rates of excess deaths on both Republicans and Democrats. But after COVID-19 vaccines arrived, Republican voters in Florida and Ohio died at a higher rate than their counterparts, according to a new study.
Researchers from Yale University who studied the pandemic's effects on those two states say that from the pandemic's start in March 2020 through December 2021, "excess mortality was significantly higher for Republican voters than Democratic voters after COVID-19 vaccines were available to all adults, but not before."
More specifically, the researchers say, their adjusted analysis found that "the excess death rate among Republican voters was 43% higher than the excess death rate among Democratic voters" after vaccine eligibility was opened.
The different rates "were concentrated in counties with lower vaccination rates, and primarily noted in voters residing in Ohio," according to the study that was published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine on Monday.
It's the latest research to suggest the perils of mixing partisan politics with medical advice and health policy.
How was the study performed? Researchers analyzed data related to 538,159 people who died between Jan. 1, 2018, and Dec. 31, 2021, at ages 25 and over, compiling their political party affiliations based on records from 2017.
The study collected weekly death counts, breaking down the deceased's party ties along with their county and age cohort. It used May 1, 2021, as a key dividing line because the date marks a month after all U.S. adults became eligible to receive shots of the COVID-19 vaccines.
The researchers estimated excess mortality based on how the overall rate of deaths during the pandemic compared to what would have been expected from historical, pre-pandemic trends.
Researchers saw a divide suddenly emerge As they calculated excess death rate data for Florida and Ohio, the researchers found only small differences between Republican and Democratic voters in the first year of the pandemic, with both groups suffering similarly sharp rises in excess deaths that winter.
Things changed as the summer of 2021 approached. When coronavirus vaccine access widened, so did the excess death gap. In the researchers' adjusted analysis of the period after April 1, 2021, they calculated Democratic voters' excess death rate at 18.1, and Republicans' at 25.8 — a 7.7 percentage-point difference equating to a 43% gap.
After the gap was established in the summer of 2021, it widened further in the fall, according to the study's authors.
The study doesn't provide all the answers The researchers note that their study has several limitations, including the chance that political party affiliation "is a proxy for other risk factors," such as income, health insurance status and chronic medical conditions, along with race and ethnicity.
The study focused only on registered Republicans and Democrats; independents were excluded. And because the researchers drilled into data in Florida and Ohio, they warn that their findings might not translate to other states.
The researchers' data also did not specify a cause of death, and it accounts for some 83.5% of U.S. deaths, rather than the entire number. And because data about the vaccination status of each of the 538,159 people who died in the two states wasn't available, researchers could only go as granular as the county level in assessing excess deaths and vaccination rates.
The study was funded by the Tobin Center for Economic Policy at Yale University and the Yale School of Public Health COVID-19 Rapid Response Research Fund.
New findings join other reviews of politics and the pandemic In late 2021, an NPR analysis found that after May of that year — a timeframe that overlaps the vaccine availability cited in the new study — people in counties that voted strongly for Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election were "nearly three times as likely to die from COVID-19" as people in pro-Biden counties.
"An unvaccinated person is three times as likely to lean Republican as they are to lean Democrat," as Liz Hamel, vice president of public opinion and survey research at the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation, told NPR.
Even before vaccines were widely accessible, researchers were working to quantify the effects of vastly divergent COVID-19 policies across U.S. states.
A widely cited study from early 2021 found that in the early months of the pandemic's official start date in March 2020, states with Republican governors saw lower COVID-19 case numbers and death rates than Democratic-led states. But the trend reversed around the middle of 2020, as Republican governors were less likely to institute controls such as stay-at-home orders and face mask requirements.
"Future policy decisions should be guided by public health considerations rather than by political ideology," said the authors of that study, which was selected as the article of the year by the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
Here's another headline, for comparison: Anti-COVID-19 vaccine talk may have been deadly for Republicans, study finds
Zero insights, 100% gaslighting propaganda.
NPR - state Media organ.
Source: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2807617
Thus, to validate the correct New Jersey evaluation: "Zero insights, 100% gaslighting propaganda."
A further reading of the "study," one learns of their " there are plausible alternative explanations for the difference in excess death rates by political party affiliation beyond the explanatory role of vaccines discussed herein" that NO "plausible alternative explanations" were cited nor contradicted.
Pure unadulterated gas.
Yep. What a bunch of nonsense. Next they should do the death rate of people who prefer New Coke compared to Classic Coke drinkers. Just as valid.
This study result should help Donald Trump when he runs against RFK Jr. Wouldn’t the people at NPR be pissed!
I’m a Florida Republican. The study was age adjusted, but where we comparing X number of Republicans to the same number of Democrats? The Rural counties are significantly more Republican. Republicans are, on average, older. Also, older people are generally retired and therefore likely to have comorbidities like excess weight, high blood pressure, diabetes, etc.
The other problem is the data has been so politicized it’s probably like “global warming” data. It doesn’t get published unless it advances “the narrative.” I used to think the CDC wasn’t political. I think when Trump became president the entire government went nuts against Trump. Because Trump mentioned treating symptoms suddenly that was a toxic subject. I think in most cases treating symptoms with drugs like ivermectin was the way to go. If the very same things had been said by a Democrat, they’d have been carved into stone instead they were vilified.
Another clue. The vaccine manufacturers did a blind study. When they got the data back, they immediately vaccinated those who had not received the vaccine in the blind test. This made any long-term study impossible. Other studies have indicated that the vaccines were of limited effect. So much so the CDC redefined vaccination to no longer mean “confers immunity.”
When he runs against RFK Jr.? He’s running in the Democrat primary?
It has already been proven that the pharma companies made up batches of varying strengths and sent them to different areas of the country BECAUSE THEY WERE NOT SURE WHAT STRENGTH VACCINE WAS NEEDED OR DANGEROUS.
They were experimenting on the population. What would stop them from send “picked” vaccines to republican areas.
@ 2 Yep
Half the article talks all the flaws in the study.
Yep, so they have absolutely no idea if the folks dying were vaccinated or unvaccinated, but when looking in primarily republican states found excessive death gap...
Yea, Okay... presumption desired is republicans didn’t get the shots and died in higher numbers.
Of course it could be the bad batches of the shots were concentrated in these 2 states etc etc etc.
Worth keeping in mind that the highest risk period is within two weeks after getting the shot and they assigned all of those deaths to the unvaccinated column.
Given that these people have produced an unending river of lies for the last three years, it would take a lot to get me to believe anything they say.
Can one find distribution lists of clotshot lot# by zip code, and match excess deaths to the bad lots by geography as well as lot # ?
Sounds like a plan....nedemic.
Yes, my cat must have been a MAGA republican. He died from it.
Hadn’t heard of that.
The DOD probably put it in the procurement contract.
FRympathies, OtO. You must miss the little yowler.
My bet is the study is sound - fake Dem “voters” had a zero mortality rate because they only exist on the voter rolls. That skews the results considerably.
I don’t doubt that this is true. I was noting differences between red and blue stated way back in 2021. Democrats holed up and quit living their lives. More Republicans were “essential workers”….. ie: people who DO things. People who had to stay out there and face the disease.
But, Republicans would rather LIVE in freedom, accepting a very small risk of natural death. For everyone under 50, the risk of dying was incredibly small. Certainly not worth the societal upheaval that was caused by all the lockdown nonsense.
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