In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, many Republicans considered the disease a congested urban area disease, therefore, a Democratic disease. They presumed their constituents were relatively safe as Republicans tend to represent the less populated areas of the country, which diabolically carry more electoral weight than more populated urban areas.
They were correct for a few months. After that, however, their inept and non-caring leader, Donald Trump, was an equal-opportunity offender who made a poor situation worse. Already underperforming in the public health arena compared to other G7 countries, the problem grew crueler under Trump. He publicly downplayed COVID-19 and often undermined health guidelines. A report by the Lancet Commission on the Trump administration’s policies suggested 40 percent of US COVID-19 deaths were avoidable.
If the US had death rates equivalent to Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the UK, the study estimated that 40 percent of US deaths during 2020 from COVID-19—around 188,000 people—would have been averted.
In the pre-vaccine phase of the pandemic, blue states — particularly large cities — were hit hardest beginning in March 2020. But once those initial outbreaks subsided, the virus took off in red states and less populated areas.
That means it’s not surprising that once those tools were widely available, states with political and cultural aversions to using them were hit harder. The bottom line–America’s political divisions are now on display in mortality rates.
Yet, astonishingly, Republicans followed their leaders against public health measures “unto” death. They did not use public health measures and many caught COVID and died.
In the spring of 2020, the areas recording the greatest numbers of deaths were much more likely to vote Democratic than Republican. But by the third wave of the pandemic, which began in the fall of 2020, the pattern had reversed: Counties that voted for Donald Trump over Joe Biden were suffering substantially more deaths from the coronavirus pandemic than those that voted for Biden over Trump. This reversal is likely a result of several factors, including, most notably, the difference in the use of public health measures, including wearing masks.
During the fourth pandemic wave, the COVID death rate in the most pro-Trump counties was about four times what it was in the most pro-Biden counties.
The cumulative impact of these differing death rates causes a vast difference in total deaths. For example, Since the Pandemic began, the 20 percent of the population where Trump ran up his highest margins in 2020 experienced nearly 70,000 more deaths than the counties representing the 20 percent of the people where Biden performed best.
The partisan divide in COVID-19 deaths widened as more vaccines became available. Blue geographic areas tended to get the vaccines. Red regions did not, led, of course, by their Republican governors and other officials.
So far, we have looked at blue and red states and blue and red counties to show geographic partisan correlations with COVID deaths. However, a study released last month by the National Bureau of Economic Research makes the partisan connections more definite. The authors studied the relationship between voting Republican and dying of COVID. They looked at “excess deaths” in Ohio and Florida through 2021. Excess deaths are the number of deaths in a given time period that is more than the number that was expected.
In 2018 and early parts of 2020, excess death rates for Republicans and Democrats were similar, around zero. However, excess deaths among Democrats at the end of last year (2021) were just above 10 percent compared to 2019. Among Republicans, they were about 35 percent.
In other words, during this COVID pandemic, Republicans tend to act as the mythical lemmings who follow each other off the cliff until death. There are several takeaways from this phenomenon, but one stands out for me: If Republicans cannot be trusted to save their hides, we should not expect them to care about others.
