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Excess Death Rates for Republicans and Democrats During the Covid-19 Pandemic
- tarakat 4y agoIt's sad to see how the medical system fails Republicans. What can we do to address this discriminatory disparity and increase equity in medicine? Or is this one of those times when it's okay to blame behavior?
- threatofrain 4y agoHow about first achieve national consensus that national healthcare should even be a priority? Anyways, in this case, many in the GOP are convinced that the vaccine is worse than the disease. The problem is information and not vaccine availability.
- idontwantthis 4y agoThis can also be blamed on the rightwing corpses.
- yieldcrv 4y agoas long as it isn’t a hand out to insurance companies sadly any compromise bill just results in the wrong bill no public option, which was scrapped from Obamacare (to get it passed into law at all), means no super negotiator with insurers no medicare ability to negotiate, means no super negotiator with insurers these nuances don't have national consensus, amongst people that are open to national healthcare
- unlikelymordant 4y ago> What can we do to address this discriminatory disparity and increase equity in medicine? The paper goes into it, just vaccinate everybody.
- irjustin 4y agoWe did? I mean it was offered to everyone... Unless you're talking about mandatory vaccination?
- unlikelymordant 4y agoI was being as flippant as i interpreted OP to be. I dont think there is a significant disparity in medical care between R and D. Vaccines were available to all, after that its personal responsibility, you cant cry that your group is dying from something that you refuse to get a vaccine for.
- tanbog6 4y agoThere are clearly a number of structural and cultural factors at play which are hard to address easily. But also yes, some of this poetic justice.
- tambarskjelve 4y agoLive free or die (from covid-19).
- watwut 4y agoWhat about having more patrolling republican dominated areas checking whether people properly wear masks and making vaccines mandatory with punishment for those who refuse them?
- ravel-bar-foo 4y agoWould the voters in Republican-dominated areas stand for that?
- n4r9 4y agoI feel like you're trying to draw a glib comparison to affirmative action. Shame on you if so - we're talking about people dying needlessly. It's not okay to blame behaviour in either case. This is a systemic issue brought about by the politicisation of science and a lack of robust, independent media.
- EagnaIonat 4y ago> It's sad to see how the medical system fails Republicans. It has nothing to do with politics. Excess deaths was because the medical infrastructure was overwhelmed. So ICU services were not available as normal. From report: > Overall, our results suggest that political party affiliation only became a substantial risk factor in Ohio and Florida after vaccines were widely available. > ... > Lack of individual-level vaccination status limits our ability to draw broad conclusions, but the results suggest that the well-documented differences in vaccination attitudes and reported uptake between Republicans and Democrats [10, 7, 8, 13] have already had serious consequences for the severity and trajectory of the pandemic in the United States.
- irjustin 4y ago> It has nothing to do with politics. > Excess deaths was because the medical infrastructure was overwhelmed. So ICU services were not available as normal. I'm a bit confused how you come to this conclusion when the section you quote from the report says the lack of vaccination uptake is to blame along party lines. overwhelmed medical infrastructure would hit both political parties equally. Unless you're suggesting that democrats in Florida have access to democrat-only-hospitals...
- Klinky 4y agoIn this case the vaccine & the ICU stays were paid for by taxpayers. If anything they got special treatment that was way above & beyond what others complain about when it comes to the lack of equal access to medical resources.
- blitzar 4y agoYou need a good guy with a vaccine to take down a bad guy with a disease.
- chuckSu 4y ago
- blitzar 4y agoGod has blessed his chosen ones.
- tanbog6 4y ago
- ifqwz 4y agoI assume that republicans are on average older than democrats. If so, has that been taken into account when making this study?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- unlikelymordant 4y agoYes, it is broken out by age and vaccination status. Turns out vaccination status is the likely culprit.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ekianjo 4y agoHow about comorbidities? They don't necessarily follow with age. Some populations can be more fit than others in the same age bracket too.
- unlikelymordant 4y agoPrior to covid, the R and D cohorts had identical excess deaths. 2 years later, following covid, there is a large gap. It seems unlikely theres a comorbidity that struck the unvaccinated, that cant be explained by covid.
- ekianjo 4y agoExcess death is not just caused by covid...
- unlikelymordant 4y agoOk, what caused the unprecedented spike in excess deaths over the period in which covid was widely spread?
- ravel-bar-foo 4y agoFig. 1(c) and Fig 2 show error bars, which is very useful. It appears that the excess deaths really didn't start having a significant (error bars not overlapping zero) Republican bias until November and December 2021, which is a lot later than I expected.
- elcritch 4y agoIt lines up roughly with most data and research I've read. Aside from vaccination rates, other public covid-19 preventative measures didn't have effects that were strongly significant over time. Timing and a factors like age of populations, common living arrangements in an area, etc were all much larger factors and varied by region.
- elevaet 4y agoThis information will be lost on most Republicans, given their general distrust of science.
- refurb 4y agoExactly. And this fits my world view and comes to a conclusion I agree with so it's clearly "science".
- gadders 4y agoBut it was Trump that got the vaccine completed in record time?
- gsinclair 4y agoHim personally, yep.
- gadders 4y agoSomeone has to drive the bus.
- blitzar 4y agoIt was actually a truck. https://time.com/4711764/donald-trump-pretend-truck-photo-white-house/ https://time.com/4711764/donald-trump-pretend-truck-photo-wh... Dont let yourself be fooled by the lamestream media, he wasnt pretending, he really drove that truck, actually a bigger one that that. The biggest truck anyone had ever driven.
- xkbarkar 4y ago
- markeibes 4y agoWhat made you think you could use the utterance "uff" in English?
- hericium 4y agoThe book "The Molecule of More"[1] presents differences in conservatives' and liberals' mind traits, with descriptions of studies attempting to make someone conservative/liberal using drugs. Overall, conservatives are more conventional and less predisposed to try new things. This may suggest that they are less likely to follow modern knowledge on healthy lifestyle, introduce nutritional changes, increase physical activity or get vaccinated. Religion may play a part, too. If you believe that your health is out of your control, you may not me inclined to do any changes. [1] https://moleculeofmore.com/ https://moleculeofmore.com/
- bryanrasmussen 4y agoIs this why after several generations of the New Deal 'conservatives' wanted to get rid of it? There is perhaps another divide than conservative liberal at work since obviously if one did not want to try new things they wouldn't want to take apart a system that had been working since before they were born.
- 0xy 4y ago>less likely to follow modern knowledge on healthy lifestyle Seems like a claim that was invented. Physically fit men are substantially more likely to be conservative. [1] [2] Your claims that "modern knowledge" even show how to be healthy are dubious, given food pyramids presented by government were co-opted by sugar peddlers, who bribed top universities like Harvard for pro-sugar 'research'. [3] [1] https://www.brunel.ac.uk/news-and-events/news/articles/Muscular-men-less-likely-to-support-social-and-economic-equality-study-suggests https://www.brunel.ac.uk/news-and-events/news/articles/Muscu... [2] https://www.dmarge.com/political-workout https://www.dmarge.com/political-workout [3] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/13/well/eat/how-the-sugar-industry-shifted-blame-to-fat.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/13/well/eat/how-the-sugar-in...
- hericium 4y ago> > less likely to follow modern knowledge on healthy lifestyle > Seems like a claim that was invented. You do realize that you ignored "This may suggest"? Also, the text we're discussing points at differences in being vaccinated. Which you also omitted.
- fabian2k 4y agoThe vaccines dramatically reduce mortality for elderly people, that's very well established. So any difference in vaccination rates between groups (of similar age or age-corrected) should show this kind of difference.
- ricardobeat 4y agoThis is literally in the abstract: > Post-vaccines, the excess death rate gap between Republicans and Democrats widened from 1.6 pp (22% of the Democrat excess death rate) to 10.4 pp (153% of the Democrat excess death rate). The gap in excess death rates between Republicans and Democrats is concentrated in counties with low vaccination rates and only materializes after vaccines became widely available.
- ekianjo 4y ago> So any difference in vaccination rates between groups You need to control for co-mordibities too. Also, people tend to become more conservative as they age (its a fact) so you should expect Republicans to be older than Democrats on average. Garbage study?
- AstralStorm 4y agoThen why the rates were similar before the vaccine went on line? The parties are big tent enough that age structure differences disappear thanks to the law of big numbers.
- ekianjo 4y agoI disagree. If your political stance causes different behaviors then its not a comparable population on all factors.
- gadders 4y agoI'd quite like to see a follow-up study, post vaccine rollout. Currently in the UK we are still running a high number of excess deaths, and no-one seems to know why: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/what-s-to-blame-for-the-surge-in-excess-deaths- https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/what-s-to-blame-for-the-...
- fabian2k 4y agoThere are plenty of articles about the UK health system being overwhelmed and overloaded. That seems like a plausible hypothesis for explaining a higher number of excess deaths.
- fdewrewrewf 4y agoIt's not currently overloaded and overwhelmed with Covid patients. I would argue that this is the fallout of the policies put in place since March 2020 - a deadly combination of less healthcare available due to the increased resources dedicated to Covid protections, and a 2+ year backlog of people who have been waiting to access healthcare. That backlog is also growing, as our GP healthcare system (which is usually the gateway to accessing healthcare) has effectively ground to a halt. It's hard to see how it would be worse if we hadn't "Saved the NHS".
- orwin 4y agoIn France, we have the same issues, but it clearly would've been worse without the special mesures taken in hospitals. However, our response still lacked 'localization' (if you have another word, be my guest), and would've been better if hospitals in less impacted areas weren't also stepping down on consultations/operations after the initial surge. My cousin from eastern France sent more than 50 patients to western France, and 8 in Germany during the two weeks following the lockdowns, so I'm not saying it was a bad idea at first, but after the first wave, we could have adapted better. The issue is that everything is politicized now, i don't like the government much but i am able to say they reacted well in some regards (and the administration was surprisingly competent and effective, i worked with them at the time and in time of crisis, it's night and day), and fucked things up in other. Also people choose weird hills do die on. If you're wrong, you're wrong. You might have had circumstances why, and maybe you're only 50% wrong, but just accept it.
- balazspapp 4y agoBased on data from Adams, OH 27% of the voters are registered republicans, 5.5% are registered democrats. Sadly, this data is missing from the article.
- ricardobeat 4y agoThe mortality data is from a private source, so most likely can't be shared. But the sample size is almost 600k people, and it's comparing aggregate death rates. Any power deficiency would be reflected in the p values and final results.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- scotty79 4y agoIt's kind of sad that fear for your personal safety causes people to endanger their personal safety in changing world in which intuitively prefered "as it was before" is no longer safest alternative.
- amadeuspagel 4y agoIt was a really terrible decision to kick one of the biggest advocates of vaccines of twitter and facebook, someone who is trusted precisely in those communities that are most distrustful of vaccines.