If you voted for Trump, you’re 3x likely to die

If you voted for Donald Trump in the last election, you are three times as likely to die of COVID-19 than if you voted for Biden.

A new analysis published by NPR shows that on a per-county basis, Trump supporters have been dying at significantly disproportionate rates since May of 2021 when vaccines became widely available. In fact, there is a direct correlation between how much of a county voted for Trump and their mortality rates - and this correlation even expands to entire states. In October of this year alone, the parts of the country that had the highest percentage of Trump votes saw SIX TIMES the number of COVID-19 deaths than the parts of the country that had the highest percentage of Biden votes.

The basic trends of anti-mask, anti-vax, and anti-science among Republicans are not new, and the fact that the death rates are higher isn’t altogether a surprise - but a 278% difference in death rates is so high that it actually provides a statistically significant case study on the combined effectiveness of masks and vaccines on lowering the death rate.

Trump voters have inadvertently made themselves a control group, and scientists can literally use political affiliation as a broad predictor of the likelihood of surviving COVID-19. Analytic polling from KFF shows that the single strongest identifying predictor of whether or not someone is vaccinated is their political party, and another poll from KFF shows that Republicans are consistently more likely to be exposed to misinformation regarding COVID-19, and to have a lower level of trust or compliance based on information from news organizations that aren’t One America News, Fox News, and Newsmax.

And this obstinance and distrust about follow basic protective measures based on deliberate disinformation is a unique Republican phenomenon- while many other social, cultural, and economic groups initially had different rates of resistance or acceptance to vaccines, in the past six months, those differences have essentially disappeared by comparison to Republicans.

Early on in the vaccine roll-out, young Americans, rural Americans, and African Americans had disproportionately low rates of vaccination, but as the effectiveness and safety of the vaccines has been studied and proven over the last year, rates for all of those groups have risen dramatically - whereas for Republicans the rate flatlined after hitting 59% and isn’t rising.

Meanwhile vaccination rates for Democrats have hit 91%. These statistics demonstrate not only a stark political divide, which certainly isn’t news - but that for Republicans, the breaking point for political belief and noncompliance based on that belief is more important than their own lives.

No other identity or ideologically-based group - not religious, cultural, ethnic, or socioeconomic has shown the same tendency towards self-harm based on widely and easily disproven misinformation. Polling shows that 94% of Republicans believe or are unsure about at least one blatantly false fact regarding COVID-19. Discredited theories like vaccines affecting fertility, or containing microchips, or that the government has exaggerated the number of COVID-19 deaths, are obvious barriers to vaccination that seem insurmountable.

Among Republicans, the basic belief is that COVID-19 is not a threat, and if you catch it then you’ll probably survive, or can rely on alternative treatments like Ivermectin. But what’s arguably even more surprising is that this dogmatic and inflexible belief against all available evidence can’t even be swayed by the very person in whom their faith lies - Donald Trump.

The former President was not only vaccinated almost immediately, but since leaving office has occasionally advocated FOR vaccines - and been met with hostility by his own supporters. Watch this clip: [clip from trump rally]. At this stage in the pandemic, virtually all deaths from COVID-19 in the US are among the unvaccinated, and an overwhelming majority of those unvaccinated are Republicans.

But despite seeing their friends and families hospitalized, the consistency of statistical proof showing that vaccines work and are safe, and even the former President speaking out in favor of the vaccine, they’re still stuck at a 59% vaccination rate that refuses to budge. 

Frankly, this is unprecedented - there has never been an equivalent situation in modern American history, and it’s hard to understand how to deal with it or what comes next. But for now, the statistics show that if you voted for Donald Trump in 2020, you’re a LOT less likely to live to see 2022.