It is official. Blacks are now less likely to die of COVID than whites in general. And conservative whites are more likely to die than liberal whites. Why? Medical and social scientists will tease causation and trends out of the data. And write scholarly papers dense in statistics and details. But we can keep it simple. Conservatives are morons.
In the first year and a half of the COVID pandemic, minorities died at higher rates than whites. In large part because — pre-vaccination — the virus was particularly fatal for people with comorbidities. And minorities had higher rates of obesity and hypertension and were more likely to be poor and without access to quality healthcare.
There was also a sense that Blacks were skeptical of the medical community after being the victims of Mengele-style medical experimentation. Notably, the Tuskeegee Syphilis Experiment, in which doctors lied to 600 Black men with syphilis and told them they would receive treatment. They did not. And inhumane scientists studied how syphilis progressed in humans. And for all its infamy, Tuskeegee was merely one of many race-based medical atrocities.
Black Americans, however, when considering the statistics on COVID made evidence-based decisions that are paying off. Now their COVID death rate is lower than that of whites. And for that, we can thank conservative politicians.
It takes sociopathic political cynicism to rally the base by telling them to shun the medical measures that could save their life and the lives of their loved ones. No one liked wearing a mask, keeping their kids out of school, or staying at home as much as possible — but a nation under threat does what it needs to blunt the worst of that threat. Unless you live in a red state. Where the authorities told citizens a deadly pandemic was no big deal.
The Founders distrusted big government and tried to write a Constitution to blunt its worse features. Americans fought a Civil War because southern white conservatives believed the Feds wanted to take their slaves away. And many immigrants fled the poverty caused by public corruption back home. But the antipathy to authority was generally Archie Bunker-style grumbling.
Then the first John Bircher President, Ronald Reagan, took office. And he convinced his fans that government was an implacable power wielded by a cabal of deep state bureaucrats to sap and impurify all of their precious bodily fluids.
By the time of COVID, once respected institutions such as the FBI and CDC became the victims of conservative paranoia exacerbated by politicians spreading the Kochs’ philosophy of “it’s all mine — fuck you and your planet”. And no government entity was spared conservative excoriation — including the military.
So here we are today. Half the population has been driven to madness by the posturing of know-nothing politicians drunk on power and funded by the plutocrats who value profits over people. Red state governments made political hay by telling the voter everything will be fine. And blue state governments were besieged by hopped-up imbeciles, high on nihilism and fueled by anger.
And then conservatives disproportionally filled ERs, ICUs, and morgues. The numbers were staggering.
Before the COVID vaccines, there was a greater rate of COVID hospital admissions and deaths among Republicans than among Democrats. After the vaccine dropped, the gap widened considerably. Of course it did. Conservatives were all suddenly experts on mRNA vaccination. They claimed that Bill Gates had ‘chipped’ it. That it magnetized the body, That it was both ineffective and would kill you. And that it was a government plot to introduce mind control
As reported by NBC news this month
Covid deaths are unevenly distributed among Republicans and Democrats.
Average excess death rates in Florida and Ohio were 76% higher among Republicans than Democrats from March 2020 to December 2021, according to a working paper released last month by the National Bureau of Economic Research. Excess deaths refer to deaths above what would be anticipated based on historical trends.
A study in June published in Health Affairs similarly found that counties with a Republican majority had a greater share of Covid deaths through October 2021, relative to majority-Democratic counties.
But experts are still puzzling over why these differences exist. Are lower vaccination rates among Republicans responsible? Or did mask use and social distancing guidelines prevent more deaths in counties run by Democrats?
Experts may still be puzzled as to the proximate cause of extra Republican deaths, but the root reason is political allegiance. Conservatives are ill-equipped to process information and make fact-based decisions.
They do not trust experts. Instead, they got their medical advice from quacks, charlatans, know-nothing politicians, and ratings-hungry, conservative talking heads. And then they lined up for a drug, Ivermectin, which does not kill viruses.
They tried “alternative” remedies which the Dept of HHS called dangerous bunk in a study of non-medical “cures”. HHS outlined its case in “COVID-19 and “Alternative” Treatments: What You Need To Know.”
Some people have sought “alternative” remedies to prevent or treat COVID-19. Some of these purported remedies include teas, essential oils, tinctures, herbal therapies such as oleander/oleandrin, and silver products such as colloidal silver. But there is no scientific evidence that any of these alternative remedies can prevent or cure COVID-19. [Bolding by HHS]
Trump himself provided the most infamous of garbage science when he proposed that shining UV light into the body and injecting bleach was the cure for COVID. I guess that was what they taught at Trump Medical School.
The right is now so far down the rabbit hole that the base booed the Lord of the Flies when he suggested they should get vaccinated. He, of course, did not stick up for reason and America — and has never suggested common sense again.
We should not be surprised. Lack of education is a leading indicator that someone will vote Republican. And while the facts prove the case, simply listening to conservative politicians is enough to tell you that their audience does not feature many rocket scientists.