As Republicans try mightily to pin the blame for the continuing COVID pandemic (roughly 1,000 deaths/day) on the Biden Administration, the Kaiser Family Foundation has identified a certain group (spoiler alert: "the Republican base") as the true culprits for the ongoing misery and disruption:
... The partisan divide between vaccinated and unvaccinated adults became even more evident as larger shares of the population received COVID-19 vaccines. Now, six months later, in October 2021, one-quarter (27%) of U.S. adults say they have not gotten a COVID-19 vaccine, but the unvaccinated population is now disproportionately made up of those who identify as Republican or Republican-leaning, with six in ten (60%) identifying as Republican or Republican-leaning (compared to about four in ten of the U.S. total adult population1) and just one in six (17%) calling themselves Democrats or Democratic-leaning. [snip]
Similar to the overall differences between unvaccinated and vaccinated adults, unvaccinated Republicans are younger and report lower levels of educational attainment than their vaccinated counterparts. Larger shares of unvaccinated Republicans identify as conservative (68% v. 58%) and live in counties where former President Trump received more votes during the 2020 election (65% v. 52%), although this difference is not dramatic.3 Another geographic characteristic – urbanicity – distinguishes the two groups, with 27% of unvaccinated Republicans living in rural areas compared to 16% of vaccinated Republicans (similar to the urban-rural divide found in the overall vaccination rates). (our emphasis)
Just guessing that they're also disproportionately fundamentalists. Because, as it says in Philippians 2:4, "Instead of each person watching out for their own good, watch out for what is better for others" "Always look out for Number 1! You da man! Screw your neighbors! Praise Lord Trump."
... An overwhelming majority of unvaccinated Republicans (96%) and a somewhat smaller but still substantial majority of vaccinated Republicans (73%) say getting vaccinated against COVID-19 is a personal choice, while a large majority of vaccinated Democrats (81%) see it as everyone’s responsibility to protect the health of others. And while vaccinated Republicans are about twice as likely as unvaccinated Republicans to worry that they will personally get sick from COVID-19 (25% vs. 11%), the share that is worried is still substantially less than it is among vaccinated Democrats (46%).
So, as we've seen demonstrated over and over for decades, and unlike the Biden Administration and the vast majority of Democrats, huge majorities of these Republicans -- vaccinated and unvaccinated -- don't give a hot damn about protecting others. Here, it's all about "personal choice" (except when it comes to a woman's reproductive rights!!), running up the death count, and drawing out the pandemic (at their expense) in order to run political ads and go on cable to yap about how Biden didn't end the pandemic.
If there's a worse collection of amoral shitwads on Earth, we'd like to know.
(h/t MockPaperScissors)
BONUS:
The midterms are going to be decided by swing voters who can’t or won’t figure out for themselves that the GOP is knowingly killing GOP voters for the purpose of prolonging the pandemic in order to blame the damage done on the Democrats. Today's post.https://t.co/S0qHaYznEB
— *The* Editorial Board (@johnastoehr) December 8, 2021
(Photo: The culprits / David McNew, AFP via Getty Images)
