Ugh. Addressing politics and deaths again

The topic that won't die

I’ve previously addressed the attempts of the mainstream press to label Republicans as ignoramuses who are paying for their stupidity by dying at increased numbers because they didn’t lock themselves in their houses, or double mask, or most importantly take the vaccine at the same rate as their Democrat betters.

Look here Are Trump voters dying from COVID at a higher rate? and Trump voters & COVID Deaths part 2.

Well, they seem to be at it again:

Specifically, this “study” claims that Republicans in OH & TX had spikes in excess deaths after COVID-19 vaccines arrived. To which my initial reaction is…

So, let’s look at some numbers. I collected, from CDC Wonder, the reported deaths in each county since 2018. I then looked at average death rates in a county for 2018/2019 and average death rates in 2021/2022. In other words, comparing death rates in a county before COVID with death rates in the county after the vaccine was available. The median increase in death rates for a county in those two periods of time was ~18%.

In the below chart, I plot the increase a county experienced in death rate on the y-axis vs. a few different factors on the x-axis. Florida counties are Blue, Ohio counties are Orange. Factors shown are (not in order):

• % of votes for Trump (not including 3rd party candidates)

• Median Household Income

• % of Population Series Complete of vaccination (i.e. at least 1 dose J&J or 2 of mRNA vaccines)

• % of Adults who smoke

Note that in order to have the lines all point in same direction, the % of Trump voters and % of smokers are plotted in descending order (i.e. moving left to right means less Trump voters and less smokers).

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to guess what the factors are for each of the four plots. I have listed the R-squared value for each state & each factor (higher value means more predictive). I will give answers in a follow-up post.