“The cleavages in American society have become so extreme that where one lives and how one votes increasingly has life and death consequences. And no recent issue better exemplifies this phenomenon than the growing red state/blue state divide over Covod-19 vaccinations.
"The vaccine fight, rather than an outgrowth of Trump’s divisive presidency, is just another example of how polarization is not just transforming American society – it’s literally killing people.”
– Michael A. Cohen, MSNBC
The United States did not hit President Joe Biden’s goal of getting 70 percent of American adults to receive at least one shot of a Covid-19 vaccine before July 4th.
So far, only 20 states, as well as the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, have surpassed the 70 percent marker for vaccinations. They all have one thing in common: Every one of them supported Biden in the 2020 presidential election.
The states that reached at least 70% are mostly in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic region. Vermont has the highest vaccination rate with 85.3%, followed by Hawaii with 83.5%. Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maine, New Mexico, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Maryland, California, Washington, New Hampshire, New York, Illinois, Virginia, Delaware, and Minnesota, Colorado, and Oregon have also reached the 70% mark.
(Sarah Al-Arshini. “20 states have already reached 70% vaccination rate.” Business Insider. July 03, 2021.)
In the states that former President Donald Trump won, it’s a very different story. Across the South, which voted overwhelmingly for Trump, vaccination rates hover around 50 percent with two states (Mississippi and Louisiana) below that mark and three others (Alabama, Tennessee, and Arkansas) barely above it. There are similarly low rates in the far west, with Idaho and Wyoming lagging behind the rest of the country.
(Michael A. Cohen. “In post-Trump America, political affiliation is directly tied to life expectancy.” In post-Trump America, political affiliation is directly tied to life expectancy (msn.com) MSNBC. July 04, 2021.)
Data assembled by Seth Masket of the Center on American Politics at the University of Denver show that the correlation between how states voted in the last election and the percentage of their citizens who are vaccinated is nearly exact.
According to Masket, “Vaccinations are a better predictor of state voting patterns in 2020 than education, racial composition, or almost any other demographic factor – thus, the great vaccine divide puts Republican leaders in a moral quandary.”
(Seth Masket. “The great vaccine divide puts Republican leaders in a moral quandary. Denver Post. June 25, 2021.)
With the highly contagious and deadly Delta variant spreading across the country, red-state America may be looking at yet another wave of Covid-19 cases this summer and fall.
It's apparent that voters are making health decisions as they vote Republican or Democrat. Today, residents of northeastern and western states (which generally vote Democratic) are living longer and healthier lives while in the GOP-voting South and Appalachia life expectancies have stagnated.
Michael A. Cohen reports …
“These disparate results are directly correlated to the attention and resources that red and blue states devote to the health of their citizens. Blue state Americans have far greater access to health care. Their political leaders invest more in education, day care, and other safety net programs. They strictly regulate handguns, which means fewer of their residents die from gun violence. Medicaid benefits are generous and are not tied to punitive regulations like work requirements.”
(Michael A. Cohen. “In post-Trump America, political affiliation is directly tied to life expectancy.” MSNBC. July 04, 2021.)
More than a decade after Obamacare, 12 states still refuse to accept federal money to expand Medicaid which was a key aspect of the health care law. This is happening even though the federal government is picking up 90 percent of the tab for the expansion and the recently enacted American Rescue Plan increased the total another 5 percent.
According to Cohen …
“Not surprisingly, all 12 states have Republican-controlled state legislatures and the rationale for not accepting the federal government’s largesse is grounded in political polarization: They want to have nothing to do with a federal program associated with Barack Obama. That means nearly 4 million people are being deprived of access to health insurance for literally no good reason.”
(Michael A. Cohen. “In post-Trump America, political affiliation is directly tied to life expectancy.” MSNBC. July 04, 2021.)
A study published in April 2021 by researchers at University of California San Diego’s Rady School of Management found that Republicans grew more skeptical of a potential COVID-19 vaccine — as well as other inoculation, including the flu shot. Republicans also consistently viewed the coronavirus to be less threatening than Democrats, the study said. The researchers said one potential reason for the disparities is that Republicans and Democrats reported consuming information from different sources.
“We now know that political affiliation is an important predictor of how communities respond to public health concerns,” the study’s authors wrote. “If we understand which areas and communities where vaccine hesitancy may be rising, it can help inform effective communication and health interventions.”
(Ariel Fridman, Rachel Gershon, and Ayelet Gneezy. “COVID-19 and vaccine hesitancy: A longitudinal study.” Plos One. April 16, 2021.)
Seth Masket, professor of political science and director of the Center on American Politics at the University of Denver, contends …
“Republicans now face a moral dilemma – some of their constituents could needlessly die of COVID-19 infections if they don’t reject the partisan messaging from their party that underplays the risks of the virus and oversells the risks of vaccines …
“As public opinion surveys have demonstrated since the beginning of the pandemic, Republicans and Democrats have very different assessments of the disease and just how dangerous it is. Throughout 2020, roughly twice as many Democrats as Republicans thought COVID was a major threat to the health of the American population. Democrats have consistently been more likely to wear masks, to favor business restrictions to slow the spread of the illness, and to believe the warnings of medical scientists …
“And just as the public was polarized about the virus, so it is polarized about the vaccines. What’s more, divisions about this vaccine have spilled over into other areas of public health. As schools and other institutions wrestle with requiring people to vaccinate, they’re finding a deeply polarized response.
“Despite some of the recent heated rhetoric about mandatory vaccines, these have been part of our lives for many decades. Just try to enroll your kid in a school or summer camp without their polio, measles, or chickenpox shots being up to date. And overwhelmingly we’ve accepted this as one of the rules for living in a society.”
(Seth Masket. “The great vaccine divide puts Republican leaders in a moral quandary. Denver Post. June 25, 2021.)
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