In the never-ending quest to politicize everything and grow division among Americans, NPR has published this Pro-Trump counties now have far higher COVID death rates. Misinformation is to blame. The premise of the piece is that Trump voters are misinformed about COVID & as a part of that, have lower vaccination rates, leading to more COVID deaths. They compare % of vote for Trump with the COVID Deaths per 100K by county. They choose a start date of May 2021 with the explanation that this is the time at which vaccines were readily available to everyone. Here is the plot that summarizes their support for the article’s headline:
Had this conversation with a friend. Another point might be to look at variance attributable to urban (Democrat) vs rural (Republican) and health care access and quality.
But the question is how long have they sat on this analysis before releasing it? Did they have the model 3 months ago and waited for the seasons to change? My money says yes. Unfortunately I don't have that much money because the people capable of such shenanigans have probably already taken it from me.
Demographics probably also play a part here, as older voters tend to lean Republican. We need also to compare age categories in each county, and compare % of Dem/Rep votes to number of deaths in those categories.
What that proves is those who manipulate data for Joe are unaware of what causes covid deaths. Spuriouscorrelations.com has a lot of fun stats showing random irrelevance, like the divorce rate in Maine is highly correlated with margarine consumption. Until they admit the causes of covid deaths (HINT: It ain't covid), all stats are meaningless.
Another possible explanation, or further confounder...
My first thought was that the densely populated counties all had the worst COVID in 2020, simply because dense population causes rapid spread. Those counties are also the ones that vote blue, simply because big cities are Liberal, and small town/rural areas are Conservative. Is it possible that the counties with the most COVID in 2020 had less in 2021 and vice versa?
Yep! You nailed this one through the board and got another subscriber. And we were shouting that this reversal would happen as soon as the idiots started making their claims. And once again we're right.
Had this conversation with a friend. Another point might be to look at variance attributable to urban (Democrat) vs rural (Republican) and health care access and quality.
But the question is how long have they sat on this analysis before releasing it? Did they have the model 3 months ago and waited for the seasons to change? My money says yes. Unfortunately I don't have that much money because the people capable of such shenanigans have probably already taken it from me.
Demographics probably also play a part here, as older voters tend to lean Republican. We need also to compare age categories in each county, and compare % of Dem/Rep votes to number of deaths in those categories.
What that proves is those who manipulate data for Joe are unaware of what causes covid deaths. Spuriouscorrelations.com has a lot of fun stats showing random irrelevance, like the divorce rate in Maine is highly correlated with margarine consumption. Until they admit the causes of covid deaths (HINT: It ain't covid), all stats are meaningless.
This is such a valuable breakdown of the data!
Good breakdown.
THANK YOU!
Another possible explanation, or further confounder...
My first thought was that the densely populated counties all had the worst COVID in 2020, simply because dense population causes rapid spread. Those counties are also the ones that vote blue, simply because big cities are Liberal, and small town/rural areas are Conservative. Is it possible that the counties with the most COVID in 2020 had less in 2021 and vice versa?
The tables are turning as predicted.
https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/kitten-corner-demography-is-destiny/comments
Yep! You nailed this one through the board and got another subscriber. And we were shouting that this reversal would happen as soon as the idiots started making their claims. And once again we're right.