Republicans' Deadly Vaccine Politics

 

 

As was noted in "Aiming for Dictatorship With A Dying Base," Republicans' urge to make political points at the expense of their credulous, skewing- older base is costing those voters -- sometimes their lives.  The mixed messages on vaccinations that their base has gotten from the likes of the Malignant Loser and Ron "Bootsie" DeSantis is just another quantifiable example of the sociopathy at the heart of the Republican Party:

The political maelstrom swirling around coronavirus vaccines may be to blame for a higher rate of excess deaths among registered Republicans in Ohio and Florida during the coronavirus pandemic, according to a study published Monday.

The report in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine underscores the partisan divide over coronavirus vaccines that have saved lives but continued to roil American politics even as the pandemic has waned.

Yale University researchers found that registered Republicans had a higher rate of excess deaths than Democrats in the months following when vaccines became available for all adults in April 2021. The study does not directly attribute the deaths to covid-19. Instead, excess mortality refers to the overall rate of deaths exceeding what would be expected from historical trends.

The study examined the deaths of 538,139 people 25 years and older in Florida and Ohio, between January 2018 and December 2021, with researchers linking them to party registration records. Researchers found the excess death rate for Republicans and Democrats was about the same at the start of the pandemic in March 2020.

Both parties experienced a sharp but similar increase in excess deaths the following winter. But after April 2021, the gap in excess death rates emerged, with the rate for Republicans 7.7 percentage points higher than the rate for Democrats. For Republicans, that translated into a 43 percent increase in excess deaths. [snip]

The release of the Yale study comes as the vaccine rollout and policies under President Biden have faced criticism by some Republicans, including members of the Republican-led House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic.

In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) pushed the rollout of vaccines early in the pandemic. But as he prepared to mount a bid for the Republican presidential nomination, DeSantis displayed increased hostility toward vaccines, petitioning for a state grand jury to investigate supposed wrongdoing related to vaccines. Florida’s health department even issued a “health alert” on mRNA vaccine safety, which drew sharp rebukes.

Public health officials fear mixed messaging on coronavirus vaccines by Republicans is shaping attitudes toward the vaccine in dangerous ways.

In a nationwide survey published in March by the University of South Florida, only 49 percent of Republicans said they were “very” or “somewhat confident” that coronavirus vaccines are safe, contrasted with 88 percent of Democrats. Stephen R. Neely, a professor at USF’s School of Public Affairs who conducted the survey, said the Yale study was important because it highlighted how sharply partisanship over coronavirus vaccine safety and efficacy has led to unnecessary deaths.

“It’s one of the most telling metrics I’ve seen in how the politicization of the pandemic has played out in the real world,” Neely said.  (our emphasis)

We have mixed feelings insofar as Republican base mortality.  But, in the big picture, vaccine idiocy drives up death rates and the cost of health care for all of us, while Republican charlatans like Bootsie -- who know better -- usually escape the consequences of their lies and misdirections.  If the Republican base wants to deny itself health care, forego vaccinations, stockpile guns, work itself into nonsensical rages, and vote against their economic best interests, that's a hell of a way to own the libs.  Unfortunately, though,  we all share in the adverse effects of their bad decisions.

BONUS:  Another take on the "all circus, no bread" politics of the Republican Party.

(Photo:  Sacramento, CA, protest in May 2020/ Stanton Sharpe/SOPA Images/REX/Shutterstock)

Monday Reading

As always, please go to the links for the full articles/ op eds.

More Labor Day reading from E.J. Dionne, Jr., on Cadet Bone Spurs' broken promise to the "forgotten men and women" he's suckered:

Recall how Trump apologists insisted after the 2016 election that racial animus did not explain Trump’s victory. What mattered, they said, was that “coastal elites” (their synonym for “liberals”) had ignored the interests of hard-working people in “the heartland” battered by economic change.

So how is the heartland doing? How much has Trump done for the working people whose votes he needed to carry states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Ohio?

Precious little. Even before the economic downturn induced by the pandemic, the areas that were crucial to Trump’s electoral college victory lagged behind the rest of the country.

A Wall Street Journal study published last September found that in 77 “blue-collar and manufacturing-reliant counties across the Midwest and Northeast” that swing heavily to Trump, employment “grew by 0.5% in 2017 and 0.6% in 2018, lower than the 1% job growth in the prior two years, before Mr. Trump took office.” The counties also trailed the national growth rate of 1.5 percent in 2017 and 1.3 percent in 2018. [snip]

Did the pay of the forgotten men and women improve relative to CEOs? No. Again, even before the economic collapse, the relationship worsened from the worker’s perspective during the Trump years, according to a study by Lawrence Mishel and Jori Kandra for the pro-labor Economic Policy Institute (EPI).

Mishel and Kandra found that the ratio of CEO compensation to worker compensation — which was “only” 21 to 1 in 1965 — has continued to rise. The ratio was 293 to 1 in 2018. It was 320 to 1 in 2019. Happy Labor Day!

Nor has Trump helped workers trying to bargain their way toward improved wages and working conditions. On the contrary, an EPI study published last fall — appropriately titled “Unprecedented” — showed in great detail how Trump appointees on the National Labor Relations Board “systematically rolled back workers’ rights to form unions and engage in collective bargaining with their employers.” In many cases, Trump’s anti-worker NLRB broke with long-standing precedent to weaken workers’ rights.  [snip]

Yes, the forgotten men and women are still forgotten, and the forgetter in chief is the man in the White House.

Sadly, there are far too many suckered Trump voters who'll abide "economic anxiety" if they have permission to hate the same people he hates.

Speaking of suckers, here's a tease for you:

Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, said his magazine's story about Trump calling Americans who died in battle "losers" and "suckers," was just the tip of the iceberg.

"I would fully expect more reporting to come out about this and more confirmation and new pieces of information in the coming days and weeks," Goldberg told CNN's Chief Media Correspondent Brian Stelter on "Reliable Sources" Sunday. "We have a responsibility and we're going to do it regardless of what he says."

Give us what we want, Mr. Goldberg!

The putrid malignancy is broad and deep in Cadet Bone Spurs' party:

President Donald Trump’s campaign is coming under criticism after one of its senior staffers on Sunday mocked Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden for “meandering” through a cemetery. Biden was visiting the graves of his late son, Beau Biden, and his first wife, Neilia Biden, and daughter, Naomi Biden. 

Beau Biden died of brain cancer in 2015; Neilia and Naomi Biden were killed in a car accident in 1972.

The former vice president had just come from St. Joseph on the Brandywine church in Wilmington, Delaware, and was walking on a path through the cemetery. Trump was playing golf at roughly the same time. 

The incident came days after it was reported that Trump didn’t want to visit the graves of fallen U.S. soldiers in France, calling them “losers” and “suckers.”

We're not showing the offensive tweet from Republican bottom feeding hack Francis Brennan, but you can see it and the blistering responses at the link above.

Former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb has a reality check on COVID Donnie's cynical talk about having a vaccine available by the end of the year:

Scott Gottlieb, the former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, told "Face the Nation" on Sunday that it's unlikely a coronavirus vaccine will be available in the U.S. by the end of 2020.

"I think the likelihood that we're going to have a vaccine for widespread use in 2020 is extremely low, I think we need to think of that as largely a 2021 event," Gottlieb said. "And if we do have a vaccine available in 2020, it's likely to be used in a much more targeted fashion."

According to Gottlieb, if the vaccine is produced before next year, it would be distributed through a "staged introduction" that prioritizes high-risk groups, like nursing home residents and health care workers.

 We also want to note the passing of legendary baseball player Lou Brock:

Hall of Famer Lou Brock, one of baseball's signature leadoff hitters and base stealers who helped the St. Louis Cardinals win three pennants and two World Series titles in the 1960s, died Sunday at 81.

The Cardinals and Chicago Cubs observed a moment of silence in the former outfielder's memory before their game at Wrigley Field.

"Lou Brock was one of the most revered members of the St. Louis Cardinals organization and one of the very best to ever wear the Birds on the Bat,'' Cardinals chairman Bill DeWitt Jr. said in a news release.

"He will be deeply missed and forever remembered.''

Brock retired in 1979 as the single-season and all-time leader in stolen bases -- marks since surpassed by Rickey Henderson. Brock was elected into the Hall of Fame in 1985.

Your task now is to complete your essential reading by heading over to Infidel 753's unsurpassed link round- up and enjoy browsing the wide range of topics he's assembled once again.  You should bookmark his blog, if you haven't already done so.