Map of life expectancy at birth from Global Education Project.

Tuesday, December 20, 2022

Republicanism is bad for your health . . .

 and might even kill you. Nancy Krieger and colleagues studied Covid-19 mortality rates and stress on hospital capacity in all 435 congressional districts, and its association with the political ideology of the relevant congresscritters and whether there was one-party control of state government. Abstract:


Methods

We analyzed observational cross-sectional data on COVID-19 mortality rates (age-standardized) and stress on hospital intensive care unit (ICU) capacity for all 435 US Congressional Districts (CDs) in a period of adult vaccine availability (April 2021–March 2022). Political metrics comprised: (1) ideological scores based on each US Representative's and Senator's concurrent overall voting record and their specific COVID-19 votes, and (2) state trifectas (Governor, State House, and State Senate under the same political party control). Analyses controlled for CD social metrics, population density, vaccination rates, the prevalence of diabetes and obesity, and voter political lean.

Findings

During the study period, the higher the exposure to conservatism across several political metrics, the higher the COVID-19 age-standardized mortality rates, even after taking into account the CD's social characteristics; similar patterns occurred for stress on hospital ICU capacity for Republican trifectas and US Senator political ideology scores. For example, in models mutually adjusting for CD political and social metrics and vaccination rates, Republican trifecta and conservative voter political lean independently remained significantly associated with an 11%–26% higher COVID-19 mortality rate.

 

That's right. exposure to conservatism literally kills people.  They literally convinced people to risk their lives and those of their neighbors, by lying to them. This is also the result:


JACKSON, Miss. -- A Mississippi man who threatened to kill Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky has pleaded guilty to making threats in interstate commerce, federal prosecutors announced Monday.

Robert Wiser Bates, 39, of Ridgeland, threatened to kill Walensky in voicemails left in July 2021 at the CDC headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, court records said.

Bates admitted to making the threatening calls in an interview with agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, according to a news release from office the U.S. Attorney Darren J. LaMarca. He also said he would kill Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and chief medical advisor to the president.

 

The Republican party is guilty of crimes against humanity. 


Update: Give me a break. These are Harvard School of Public Health faculty, publishing the findings in a peer reviewed journal. Guess what? They're smarter than you and they know more about how to do this than you do. The analysis controls for age, prevalence of diabetes, obesity, and socioeconomic variables and other potential confounders so no, those are not the explanation. Also, I didn't say anything about government mandated vaccination, but in fact many vaccines, in all 50 states, are already mandated by the government in order for children to attend school. Whether Covid-19 vaccination should be mandated for adults might be debatable, but the point is people are not getting the vaccine voluntarily because Republican politicians are lying to them. Get it?


3 comments:

Daniel said...

Perhaps you have this wrong Cervantes. A counter factual if you will, Republican politicians initially supported vaccines but then followed the madness of their base into supporting antivax sentiment. That is my observation from living in a rural red state. The Republican base can make many of our Republican politicians seem half enlightened. Call me jaded.

Don Quixote said...

As usual, my interest is in WHY Fox lies to people. Is it simply a matter of Rupert Murdoch seeking to gain immense profits for himself by creating outrageous lies to attract people's attention, so that they'll watch his TV stations? Is it just that simple?

I'm in Arizona now. Two days ago, I saw a bumper sticker on a big pickup truck. The sticker was commercially, produced, and read in large capital letters something like, "JOE BIDEN -- AMERICA'S NUMBER ONE CHILD SEX TRAFFICKER". The bumper sticker might as well have read, "Donald Trump is an alien from Mars who wants to devour German babies."

So, what the fuck? Is this all about one man seeking to reap windfall profits on a daily basis from spouting laughable, outrageous lies that people who have no critical thinking skills will espouse--so that they'll keep watching his television station and buying from his advertisers?

The number one problem in the US is racism. Deal with that, and a lot of other things will fall into place. But just as large a problem here, and in much of the rest of the world, is the failure to teach people how to think, instead of WHAT to think.

Cervantes said...

Well Daniel, I think it's kind of a two-way street. Once some right wing yakkers and politicians started lying about the vaccines, Republican politicians who wanted to get away from it found that they couldn't without losing support, so they went along with it, or they embraced it, viz. Ron DeSantis. But yeah, there was always an anti-vax movement out there, although it used to be non-partisan.