Now we have the numbers showing what we always suspected

Nextgov, an online service that reports on activities related to the federal government, published this article this week. I have to classify it as one of the most appalling, but at the same time the least surprising, articles I’ve read about the pandemic.

The article describes a study done at Yale University. It’s summed up early on:

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.

There had been previous studies that analyzed Covid death rates by county, then compared those with how the county had voted in the 2016 election. These found a correlation between counties that voted for Trump and ones that had a high Covid death rate. However, as the article points out, there might be other factors that account for the high death rate, such as availability of health care or average household size.

This study took a different approach. The researchers matched every death in the two states to the party registration of the person in 2017. They then used deaths data from previous years to “predict” the numbers of people who would have died – absent the pandemic - broken down by age, time of year, party affiliation and location. By comparing actual deaths in each category with the expected number, they could determine “excess deaths” – those that were probably due to the pandemic. To quote the article,

 When the researchers looked at excess deaths before and after the pandemic, the results were sobering. Tragically, but not surprisingly, both Republicans and Democrats experienced a sudden uptick in mortality during the first year of the pandemic. While excess death rates were slightly higher among Republicans than Democrats, “both are dying at really high rates over this period,” Goldsmith-Pinkham says.

The fates of Republicans and Democrats began to diverge markedly after the introduction of vaccines in April of 2021. Between March 2020 and March 2021, excess death rates for Republicans were 1.6 percentage points higher than for Democrats. After April 2021, the gap widened to 10.6 percentage points.

So, while the likelihood of both Republicans and Democrats experiencing excess deaths during the first year of the pandemic was almost equally high, Republican excess deaths in those two states (which are of course probably representative of a number of red states) were more than ten percent higher than Democratic excess deaths after April 2021, which was around when vaccines became freely available (I got my second dose on April 1, 2021).

Of course, the reason for this is no surprise. Given the widespread questioning of (and outright opposition to) vaccines by both the right-wing media and GOP politicians (almost all of whom were themselves vaccinated, to be sure; they ain’t no fools), it was almost inevitable that a lot of people who listened to them actually took their advice.

Actually, this study is very helpful at this particular time when the Republicans are wondering, after losing or underperforming in three national elections in a row, if perhaps they need to rethink their strategy. I think that’s an excellent idea. In fact, here’s what I think should be their first principle: If you want to win more elections, don’t kill your own voters.

It’s worth a try, anyway.

The numbers

These numbers were updated based on those reported on the Worldometers.info site for Sunday, December 4.

Month	Deaths reported during month/year	Avg. deaths per day during month/year	Deaths as percentage of previous month/year
Month of March 2020	4,058	131
Month of April 2020	59,812	1,994	1,474%
Month of May 2020	42,327	1,365	71%
Month of June 2020	23,925	798	57%
Month of July 2020	26,649	860	111%
Month of August 2020	30,970	999	116%
Month of Sept. 2020	22,809	760	75%
Month of Oct. 2020	24,332	785	107%
Month of Nov. 2020	38,293	1,276	157%
Month of Dec. 2020	79,850	2,576	209%
Total 2020	354,215	1,154
Month of Jan. 2021	98,604	3,181	119%
Month of Feb. 2021	68,918	2,461	70%
Month of March 2021	37,945	1,224	55%
Month of April 2021	24,323	811	64%
Month of May 2021	19,843	661	82%
Month of June 2021	10,544	351	53%
Month of July 2021	8,833	287	84%
Month of August 2021	31,160	1,005	351%
Month of Sept. 2021	56,687	1,890	182%
Month of Oct. 2021	49,992	1,613	88%
Month of Nov. 2021	38,364	1,279	77%
Month of Dec. 2021	41,452	1,337	108%
Total 2021	492,756	1,350	158%
Month of Jan. 2022	65,855	2,124	159%
Month of Feb. 2022	63,451	2,266	96%
Month of March 2022	31,427	1,014	50%
Month of April 2022	13,297	443	42%
Month of May 2022	11,474	370	86%
Month of June 2022	11,109	370	97%
Month of July 2022	11,903	384	107%
Month of August 2022	16,199	540	136%
Month of September 2022	13,074	436	81%
Month of October 2022	12,399	400	95%
Month of November 2022	9,221	307	74%
Total Pandemic so far	1,106,860	1,106

 

I. Total deaths (as of Sunday)

Total US reported Covid deaths as of Sunday: 1,106,860

Average daily deaths last seven days: 295

Average daily deaths previous seven days: 304

Percent increase in total deaths in the last seven days: 0.2%

II. Total reported cases (as of Sunday)

Total US reported cases as of Sunday: 100,863,106          

Increase in reported cases last 7 days: 369,014 (52,716/day)

Increase in reported cases previous 7 days: 284,991 (40,713/day)

Percent increase in reported cases in the last seven days: 0.4% (0.3% last week)

I would love to hear any comments or questions you have on this post. Drop me an email at tom@tomalrich.com.