Vaccine politics may be to blame for GOP excess deaths, study finds

Do you think? A whole voting block being told to not get vaccinated? To not wear masks? GOP politics MAY be to blame.

If only the census was happening this year and not 2020.
I'm sorry but it's never fault of the conservatives or their leaders. Despite telling everybody else to take responsibility for their own lives and decisions conservatives have mastered the art of conspiracy so that they always have someone else to blame. In this case it's those evil liberals in the "organized left" using reverse psychology.

https://www.yahoo.com/video/breitbart-writer-claims-organized-left-124015633.html
Reddit used to have a whole separate called /r/HermanCainawards that posted COVID Darwin award winners.

It was brutal but honestly the recipients all earned it.
- It was better at the beginning before they started requiring names and pfp to be covered in posts. Even if it was a celebrity. All the posts were from public social media pages. If someone is enough of a dumbass to broadcast their dangerous stupidity to the world, they they don't deserve anonymity.
- So sad that Me-ma and Pop-Pop followed the advice of someone who told them the answer might be to inject bleach and shove a light bulb up their ass.
I’ll bet their higher religiosity and tendency to congregate in church weekly couldn’t have helped either.
It's not just that. They distrust science and medicine in all things. These are fat, gullible people, in overall poor mental and physical health; exceptions have only skated by on dumb luck. If they didn't believe the docs on virus prevention, they don't believe them on obesity and lung disease prevention either. If they didn't wear masks for COVID, they don't wear them for spraying paint remover at their jobs.

It's industrial hygiene and physical and mental hygiene to which they are ignorant, personal hygiene, too. If they didn't social distance to stop the spread, they dont wash their hands after taking a huge messy shit.
- You've gone a bit overboard there and come off rather unhinged.
  
  I'm pretty sure the vast majority of conservatives have decent bathroom hygiene. Lol.
The worst part is it looks suspiciously like a deliberate strategy. They told their base that deliberately not taking precautions "owns the libs", that you should vote in person on Election Day without a mask. This creates a correlation between voting method and candidate, with mail-in votes being mostly Democratic. Then they simply attacked mail-in votes.

Thankfully it ultimately didn't work, but they were willing to kill their voters to try it.
And in other news... water is wet and the sky is up! More details at 11...

I believe the quote goes, ''I never thought leopards would eat MY face,' sobs a woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party"

As the article explains, the study in question is actually kind of weak in terms of providing solid proof that the excess deaths were attributable to COVID-19, but it's apparently one in a growing number of studies that all have relatively weak "arrows" pointing in the same direction. So, the reason researchers view these studies as evidence that Republican messaging on vaccines is partially to blame is due to the collective body of evidence, not just this paper.

But that’s the thing about excess mortality during COVID, it was mostly due actual COVID
- ??? Did you even read the article you posted?
  
  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 excess death rates between groups could be affected by other factors, such as differences in education, race, ethnicity, underlying conditions and access to health care, said Wallace, an assistant professor at the Yale School of Public Health and the lead author.
  
  “We’re not saying that if you took someone’s political party affiliation and were to change it from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party that they would be more likely to die from covid-19,” Wallace said.
Weak compared to what?

In my experience litigating medicolegal causation, this is the nature of epidemiology.

Like, the standard isn't "beyond a reasonable doubt," in my view, it's "preponderance of the evidence," aka "more likely than not."

More likely than not, the excess deaths were COVID. It's like when the weather forecasts a 20% chance of rain. Weak, right? No. It's a 100% chance of rain in 20% of the forecast area.

In equally shocking news, eating cheetos turns your fingers orange.

Link to the actual study: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2807617

BTW, let me add a bit to the cautions about attributing the difference in death rates entirely to Republicans' performative dumbshittery: older people are, in general, both more likely to be Republicans and more likely to die of COVID (and also other diseases that an overloaded medical system could otherwise have helped them with), so there's a pretty obvious confounding variable here.

On the other hand, that confounding variable applied just as much before the vacciles were available, and the difference in death rates doesn't seem to have existed before that.

On the gripping hand, I'd expect the similar difference in performative dumbshittery WRT masks to have been around before the vaccines came out, and to have caused a difference in death rates before vaccines... but it looks like not.

I’m quite confident that these researchers are capable of controlling for other demographic factors, since that’s like data analysis 101. Considering they state the results are stratified by age, why would you think age is a confounding variable? That comment doesn’t make sense to me.
- I think the commenter didn’t notice that the analysis controlled for age through stratification. You’re right that that confounding variable is taken care of.
- Um actually this study is dog water because they forgot to count the numbers, obviously. I saw it on the title and clearly I know better
On the gripping hand

Aha! OP is a motie, I knew it.

Is there a group Darwin award?

Dying from COVID to own the libs is it’s own special award
- It’s called the Herman Cain Award.
- You're missing the point man. They owned the libs hardcore. "Lmao xd. Trump 2024. Lib btfo"
  
  This is all sarcasm.
- Those idiots think that conservatives love of dishonesty is some sort of superpower when it is actually a death trap.
Yes, it's called the Biden Presidency lol

Just enough Republicans died in Wisconsin and Georgia to hand Dems the W

I feel owned so much. It hurt me feelings. Buh...More please?

I'm crying salty liberal tears over their graves.

Didn't we figure this out already?

Yes, there have been a few previous studies about this.

It's great to be alive

"The study examined the deaths of 538,139 people 25 years and older in Florida and Ohio"

Would be interesting to see a nationwide study.

I’d imagine it’s representative. Both states are slightly redder than average ig

"may"

Insert YouDontSay.jpg meme here. Not giving op grief. Just can’t believe WaPo has to write out the obvious.

Gee, ya think?

I know why studies with seemingly obvious results like this are conducted, (sometimes the obvious answer is wrong) but the waste of money still bugs me.

A peer reviewed study (especially when the results are reproduced by another group performing the same experiments and receiving those same results) is the difference between science and anecdote.

The irony is not lost on me that the study itself is of those that rejected completely separate scientific studies, and paid with their lives in doing so.
Sometimes the obvious answer is wrong, but there are plenty of other reasons to run this study. Advocacy is better with real numbers backing it up, there are probably similar circumstances that are less obvious that now warrant a closer look…