James Surowiecki Profile picture
Oct 3, 2022 7 tweets 2 min read Read on X
New study of almost 600,000 deaths in Ohio and Florida shows that registered Republicans had far higher excess-death rates than registered Democrats during the pandemic, with almost all of the gap coming after vaccines were available.
nber.org/system/files/w…
@_Kodos_ @politicalmath Vaccination rates for the elderly in American red states were much lower than vax rates in the UK - 10-15 points lower. So the unvaxxed elderly, and unvaxxed <65, accounted for a much higher percentage of total deaths here.
@AmyBeePhoenix @_Kodos_ @politicalmath The county data is suggestive of what's obviously true, namely that differences in vax rates explain the widening of the excess-death gap in 2021. But it's the documentation of the fact that that gap was small in 2020, and widened dramatically post-vax, that is most important.
@SwedenTeam Anyway, the data on vax rates by race aren't reliable enough to make fine-grained distinctions. What we know is that black and white vax rates are in the same ballpark, Latino rates are higher, and Asian vax rates are very high.
@ZetaReticulon @OxfordJo70 The 2nd and 3rd waves in Northeastern states with high vax rates, for instance, were much lower than the 1st wave. That obviously would not have happened had the vaccines been killing people.
@EduEngineer "We do not observe a statistically significant association between the county-level vaccination rate and the Republican-Democrat excess death gap until after the vaccine is widely available."
@EduEngineer It's only after the vaccines become available that Republicans start dying in far greater numbers than Democrats. And again, these are excess deaths, not just raw Covid deaths, so the study is already controlling, to some degree, for health/wealth effects in death rates.

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More from @JamesSurowiecki

Nov 7
The fundamental lesson I hope Dem politicians take from this election is that they should not adopt positions unless they can defend them, honestly, in a one-on-one conversation with the median American voter, who is a white, non-college 50-yr-old living in a small-city suburb.
I don't mean that Dems have to adopt the same positions as that median voter. I mean they have to be able to make the case for their positions to that voter in a coherent, honest fashion, rather than trying to obscure the position or pretending they really don't hold it.
And when asked about your positions, your answer can't be "I'm just following the law." Immigration, criminal justice, trade policy, health care, trans issues, abortion: don't adopt a position unless you can make a convincing case for it to the median voter.
Read 4 tweets
Oct 16
It's tough to interview Trump: he lies so relentlessly, and with such abandon, that you either have to spend half the interview fact-checking him and pushing back on his lies, or else just let him lie to your audience.
cnn.com/2024/10/16/pol…
With most politicians, you figure they'll fudge a few facts, gild the lily to make themselves look better, dodge a tough question or two. That's manageable as an interviewer. But Trump will lie about anything and everything, which is hard to deal with.
Trump, for instance, told Micklethwait that Apple had opened a manufacturing plant in Texas because Trump told him that's what he had to do to get a tariff exception. It's a lie: the Texas plant opened in 2013. And it's such a brazen lie that it's hard to believe.
Read 4 tweets
Sep 30
Dinesh D'Souza bucking to get sued for defamation again. His tweet is a lie. The people in the ad in question are not actors, and are in fact Republicans and former Trump voters who are supporting Harris. Story here:
savvymainline.com/2024/09/29/far…
The lies in D'Souza's tweet - which he's left up, even though he's been informed that it's false - came from a collection of lies in a tweet by Bad Hombre, who constructed a totally false conspiracy theory based on a mis-identification of the people in the ad. It got 59K likes. Image
Chadwick and Lange are not "trained actors." Chadwick never worked for the Arden Theatre. They are not the people Bad Hombre identified as having donated money to Democrats. And they are Republicans who are supporting Harris this time around.
Read 4 tweets
Sep 16
What Vance says here is v. important - he thinks all Americans should not be in the same insurance risk pool. That would mean that older Americans who aren't yet 65 and Americans with pre-existing conditions would have to pay much more for health insurance than they now do.
There were two core principles at the heart of Obamacare: guaranteed issue (everyone should be able to buy insurance) and community rating (adjusted for age, everyone should pay the same price for insurance). Both of those principles are very popular with Americans.
Vance, though, is saying he and Trump want to do away with community rating. That would mean that insurers would charge people with pre-existing conditions and chronic illnesses much more. So if you're sick, or have been sick in the past, your premiums will rise sharply.
Read 6 tweets
Aug 23
🧵The director of Project 2025 was chief of staff of Trump's Office of Personnel Management.

The author of the Project 2025 chapter on national defense served as acting Defense Secretary under Trump.

The author of the chapter on homeland security was head of DHS under Trump. Image
The author of the Project 2025 chapter on the intelligence community worked in national intelligence under under Trump.

The author of the chapter on dismantling the EPA was chief of staff for the EPA under Trump.

The author of the chapter on HHS worked in HHS under Trump.
The author of the Project 2025 chapter on the Dept. of the Interior ran the Bureau of Land Management under Trump.

The author of the chapter on housing ran HUD under Trump.

The author of the chapter on transportation worked in Treasury under Trump.
Read 7 tweets
Aug 15
The thread of comments to my tweet is hilarious. It's made up almost entirely of people who trust their vague memories of what grocery prices were like in January 2021 over the Bureau of Labor Statistics' systematic monthly data. They're speaking their truth - it's just not true. Image
Swann's also correct that lots of people are just lying, mostly because they thibk the doomerist "grocery prices have doubled!" narrative is politically useful. Image
Here's the CPI for groceries over the last 5 yrs.

In Jan. '21, the price index was at 252.6. In July 2024, it was up to 305.8. That's an increase of 21%.

Prices have risen a little more than that in some spots, a little less in others. But nowhere have they doubled. Image
Read 4 tweets

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