1. Quick thread on the new @pewresearch analysis of the changing geography of COVID-19 deaths. Well worth a read: pewresearch.org/politics/2022/…
2. It uses New York Times COVID-19 mortality data to show how the geography of the pandemic shifted dramatically over time.
3. Dense urban centers were hit hardest in the earliest wave of pandemic. During the first wave, the coronavirus death rate in the 10% of people in the densest areas was NINE TIMES higher than the 10% living in the least dense areas.
4."In each subsequent wave, however, the nation’s least dense counties have registered higher death rates than the most densely populated places."
5. The overall COVID death rate ended up higher in the least dense parts of the country, despite the stagger death rates in the densest parts of the country early on.
6. And the relationship between COVID death rates and political affiliation has also changed.
7. Early on Biden counties had the highest death rates, over time they were surpassed by Trump counties.
8. "As vaccines became more widely available, this discrepancy between “blue” and “red” counties became even larger as the virulent delta strain of the pandemic spread across the country during the summer and fall of 2021."
9. "During the fourth wave of the pandemic, death rates in the most pro-Trump counties were about four times what they were in the most pro-Biden counties."
10. "When the highly transmissible omicron variant began to spread ... these differences narrowed substantially. However, death rates in the most pro-Trump counties were still about 180% of what they were in the most pro-Biden counties throughout late 2021 and early 2022."
11. "Since the pandemic began, counties representing the 20% of the population where Trump ran up his highest margins in 2020 have experienced nearly 70,000 more deaths from COVID-19 than have the counties representing the 20% of population where Biden performed best."
12. " Overall, the COVID-19 death rate in all counties Trump won in 2020 is substantially higher than it is in counties Biden won (as of the end of February 2022, 326 per 100,000 in Trump counties and 258 per 100,000 in Biden counties)."
13. Of course the big factor here was vaccination. "Among the large majority of counties for which reliable vaccination data exists, counties that supported Trump at higher margins have substantially lower vaccination rates than those that supported Biden at higher margins."
14. "nearly 10% of the country lived in areas where less than half of the adult population was vaccinated as of November 2021. Death rates in these low-vaccination counties were roughly twice what they were in counties that had 80% or more of their population vaccinated."
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