Thread by @gbrumfiel

Short 🧵

Over the past few months @DanielPWWood and I have been looking at the connection between COVID deaths, vaccinations and election results. We found counties that went heavily Trump in 2020 had higher death rates. And lower vaccination rates.

npr.org/sections/healt…

@DanielPWWood To me, this correlation is b-a-n-a-n-a-s. There is NO reason election results and deaths from a disease should have ANYTHING to do with each other. For example, state flu deaths don't appear to match the election map. Why would they?

(NB, I'm not being rigorous here)

@DanielPWWood And yet there it is. An apparently massive connection between how a county voted and how many people are dying from COVID-19. How can this be? After a lot of research, I've concluded it comes down to basically two things:

✅Vaccination

✅Misinformation about vaccines.

@DanielPWWood That first one is really simple. Vaccines MASSIVELY reduce death from COVID-19. The reduction is %1400 according to the CDC. Even I didn't realize it was that big.

And the partisan vax divide has been growing for months. (Credit: @CDCgov, @KFF)

@DanielPWWood @CDCgov @KFF Given the immense reduction to death rate afforded by the vaccines, it's wholly unsurprising that IF vaccinations are lower in pro-Trump counties, mortality might be higher. By why is vaccination lower?

That's where the misinformation comes into the picture. Polling by @KFF shows that Republicans are far more likely to think falsehoods about COVID and vaccines might be true. Belief in multiple false statements highly correlates with vaccination status, @lizhamel told me.

So why are conservatives more likely to believe misinformation? This is where the data trail ends... and the journalism trail picks up. I spent some time at a large anti-vaccine conference trying to figure it out.

npr.org/2021/12/06/105…

I'm going to let that story speak for itself, but two things are clear:

✅There are reasons that the political far-right might want to stoke fears about vaccines.

✅The anti-vaccine community is eager to spread its message.

That's hardly the end of it, but it's important.

Final note: On social media, I've seen people using our analysis to dunk on others b/c of their politics.

That is not why we did this work. This is pointing out a stark and difficult problem in America. One that everyone should be trying to fix. Lives hang in the balance.

Coda: I should point out that @charles_gaba and others have been watching this relationship for months. He's also found a prob with our analysis around Florida.

But this correlation is so robust, even removing FL doesn't change it much (We'll add it back soon).