18 replies to this topic

[HBRU]

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 refers to deaths above what would be anticipated based on historical trends.

Covid death rates higher among Republicans than Democrats, research shows (nbcnews.com)

[HBRU]

 Excess death rates in Florida and Ohio were 153% higher among Republicans than Democrats during that time, the paper showed.

"We really don’t see a big divide until after vaccines became widely available in our two states," Wallace said.

[Dorian Grey]

Winston Churchill is often credited with saying: 'If You Are Not a Liberal When You Are Young, You Have No Heart, and If You Are Not a Conservative When Old, You Have No Brain'

 

Democrats tend to be YOUNG and idealistic, and republicans OLD and realistic.  Yep...  It's well known most all COVID deaths occur in seniors, so a lot more republicans falling off the twig than democrats.  

 

Don't know if this means democrats are smarter than republicans when it comes to COVID, or whether the virus is simply a "boomer eraser" designed to kill oldsters by those who made it in China, which has a massive aging population problem due to their extended one child policy.

 

https://asia.nikkei....yle-lost-decade

 

China's aging population threatens a japan-style lost decade

 

Beijing's brutal one-child policy tackled overpopulation but did it go too far?  

 

 

[HBRU]

yes, republicans older... BUT it's the excess death rates that increased.... before it was the SAME, after (from March 2020 to December 2021) it was 76% higher among Republicans than Democrats. For me its clear

[Daniel Cooper]

It's odd that an Italian would be so interested in US political parties, don't you think?

 

I'm guessing most Americans couldn't name an Italian political party.

 

 

 

[HBRU]

It's odd that an Italian would be so interested in US political parties, don't you think?

 

I'm guessing most Americans couldn't name an Italian political party.

 

yes I am italian

we italians discovered America by the way

 

America name comes from "Amerigo Vespucci"... an italian explorer

 

This news popped out in Italy, strange nobody from US discuss that here

[Dorian Grey]

yes, republicans older... BUT it's the excess death rates that increased.... before it was the SAME, after (from March 2020 to December 2021) it was 76% higher among Republicans than Democrats. For me its clear

 

Sorry if I'm corn-fused.  Excess deaths compared to historical norm?  March 2020 to December 2021 was peak period for the deadly (for seniors/republicans) pre-omicron virus.  I would think one would expect to see an increase in excess deaths in seniors (which tend towards conservatism) compared to younger populations (which tend to liberalism) during this time.  

 

If the implication is republicans were vaccine hesitant, and this may be why they died in excess, I would want to look only at the period where vaccines were offered, which didn't start until 2021.  Then we'd have to consider how effective the vaccines were at preventing death in seniors with COVID, compared to younger populations.  

 

I'd bet even among the vaccinated, there were still more COVID deaths in seniors than the young.  

[Daniel Cooper]

It will be interesting to see if that paper passes peer review (if in fact it has been submitted for peer review which isn't obvious).

 

They seem to be attributing the difference to vaccination rates. But that of course is an assumption. There were probably any number of differences between those two groups. Off the top of my head:

 

1.) Republicans skew more blue collar in terms of employment. A high percentage of white collar jobs moved to work from home and were therefore more isolated. But, your plumber or mechanic can't exactly do his work from home so he had to stay out in the world and therefore more exposed.  Of course, the work at home crowd depended heavily on the services of those that could not work from home, so it would be a bit ironic if they sneered at the other side for their higher death rates if this were a significant explanation of the differences.

 

2.) Democrats seemed to be more inclined to "shelter in place" and not venture out in public. My observation is that a higher percentage of my Democrat friends eschewed going to restaurants, church services, public gatherings, etc. That will of course lower rates of infection.

 

3.) Democrats seemed more inclined to wear masks. I don't think that played a role personally, but it must be stated if we're being honest.

 

4.) And of course, there were differences in vaccination rates.

 

If they really wanted to get closer to the truth, they would have examined both excess death rates and infection rates. That might have been somewhat more revealing. As the paper stands now, they've potentially made a correlation between excess deaths and political party affiliation, but they've not explained it and they've certainly not pinned it on vaccination rates.

 

Another point of contention - their observation that excess death rates tracked prior to covid but diverged after the pandemic isn't that material to addressing the differences in age demographics.  Before the pandemic, "excess deaths" is mainly just random noise since nothing is really driving it. When an 80 year old dies of natural causes, that's not an excess death.

 

But, if Republican's skew older and therefore more susceptible to death by covid infection, then of course they will register more excess death after the start of the pandemic. In fact, that is the outcome you would expect. Had they provided graphs for excess deaths per political party broken down by age demographic, that would have been much more informative. Maybe they addressed that in the text, but I saw no such graph. We can't compare these groups in aggregate if the age distributions aren't very similar when we talk about a pandemic that vastly targets the elderly when it comes to fatalities. 

 

The fact that they did not address these obvious differences in these two groups makes me question to what extent they were really trying to get at the truth.

 

That paper btw bears all the hallmarks of being some class project rather than some serious in depth investigation. I'd bet I'm looking at something that is the result of a master's level course in statistics or public health.  

 

ETA: What I'm asking for is their second graph for each of their age bins. They did some sort of regression analysis of the difference between excess death rates (third graph "percentage point difference in excess deaths between Republicans and Democrats after regression adjusting for year-month-by-age-bin-by-county differences") but they don't provide good detail on how they did the regression. Simply plotting the graphs for each age bin would have been unambiguous. In any case, that third graph implies a 15% (ish) difference, not a "153% difference". The "153% difference" seems like click bait cooked up by someone's marketing department.

 

Edited by Daniel Cooper, 31 August 2023 - 03:36 PM.

[Daniel Cooper]

yes I am italian

we italians discovered America by the way

 

America name comes from "Amerigo Vespucci"... an italian explorer

 

This news popped out in Italy, strange nobody from US discuss that here

 

Minor point of contention - Columbus never set foot in North America. He basically discovered the Bahamas, which is a fine place to discover but is not "America".

[HBRU]

Besides Cristoforo Colombo, Amerigo Vespucci and all the Italians that discovered "America" here you have the final complete study

https://jamanetwork....article/2807617

[Daniel Cooper]

Back to the topic at hand.
 
If I accept that these guys did their age adjusting regression correctly - and for sake of argument I will assume so, then they give up the whole paper in their one graph:


 

If I average out the R - D age adjusted difference from say February 2020 till the end of their reporting period (late 2021), then the difference isn't even 10%. Even if I take the period from mid April 2021 to the end, it still isn't 15%. That's not much and isn't anything like the 153% difference being advertised.  That is using their own age adjustments. Looking at the non-age adjusted graphs is useless because of the dissimilarities in the demographics, yet that is the only way to look at this paper to get the news story headlines.

 

What is being bandied about in the media simply isn't honest.

 

 

[HBRU]

10% no much ?!???

The researchers found that people who cut their calories slowed the pace of their aging by 2% to 3%, compared to people who were on a normal diet. That translates, Belsky said, to a 10% to 15% reduction in the likelihood of dying early.

[Daniel Cooper]

10% no much ?!???

The researchers found that people who cut their calories slowed the pace of their aging by 2% to 3%, compared to people who were on a normal diet. That translates, Belsky said, to a 10% to 15% reduction in the likelihood of dying early.

 

10% is a lot if you happen to be in that excess 10% for sure.

 

But, it's not 153%. And the error bars on that graph aren't negligible. And always keep in mind, error bars are a mathematical product once you accept the assumptions used for the regression analysis, which may themselves be incorrect. 

 

My issue is that this paper (perhaps with the participation of the authors, or perhaps not) is being used to sell a story of a massive difference between two political parties in terms of covid response and the subtext is "Look at how stupid these Republicans are". 

 

Yet, the paper itself actually tells a story of a much smaller difference once the age demographics are taken into account - which is the only way one can attempt to look at this data. But even then it makes the error of attributing that much smaller difference pretty much entirely to the vaccine. That's just bad science since there are numerous differences in these populations aside from vaccine uptake rates.

[HBRU]

No vax in Italy say that vaccinated people were going almost all to die in a couple of years after the shots... but it turns out that vaccinated people have a small (but consistent) chanche to survive according to this study that has maybe bias but is something consistent IMHO.. this is relative to the first Covid of course, not Omicron wich is much lighter. Now new variants I can't say if pose a risk or not. Of course OLD people have much greater benefits from vaccines than young people. This can be said for sure.

[Daniel Cooper]

I took the first and second vaccine but no boosters, so I'm rooting for there being no long term adverse effects as I have a personal stake in that game.

 

But, it's undeniable that these vaccines were oversold. I got my two Pfizer shots in the 2nd round around the first of Q2. At that time, Dr. Fauci was advertising these vaccines as being 95% effective and should last a year to 18 months. That was completely bogus. Whether that was intentional or not I have no clue, but their official estimates were simply well off the mark.

 

The other thing that was being sold was that "We can beat this virus with these vaccines" - the implication being that we were going to eliminate covid through widespread vaccination. I knew that wasn't true so I can only assume they knew it as well. Mankind has only eliminated one human virus from the wild in it's history - smallpox. And that only took roughly 100 years with a very effective and durable vaccine and a virus that evolved very slowly - neither of which would ever be true with covid-19.

 

I think things would have gone far better if heath care authorities had been more transparent about the realities of the vaccines from the beginning. They either didn't know how effective the vaccines were going to be, or they knew but didn't want to say. They should have never implied that covid would be "defeated" with a vaccine. See the problem is, people can often times figure out they aren't getting the entire truth even if they aren't an expert in the particular issue at hand. And when people feel they aren't being dealt with truthfully - conspiracy theories will multiply geometrically. So all those anti-vax stories - our governments bear no small responsibility in their spreading. It's not irrational for people to be suspicious of something when in fact they aren't being told the entire truth.

 

 

[HBRU]

Yes, instead of a scientific question it became a political war... that was really bad... and at the end of the day some of the old republicans that could have a benefit from covid shot did not make it, but also children that was of course almost free of dangerous risk from covid also maked the shot because the parents where dem.

[joesixpack]

I would like to know, how they determined which political party someone voted for, before they died.

 

Unless they are just guessing based on the number of registered democrats and republicans we in the states they looked at. This would not be accurate, or scientific.

[HBRU]

in the US -as I know- there are public lists of people voting for one or other political party. But beeing italian I dont know exactly how does it works.

[Daniel Cooper]

in the US -as I know- there are public lists of people voting for one or other political party. But beeing italian I dont know exactly how does it works.

 

In the US, the requirement for registering for a political party varies on a state by state basis.

 

Some states require you to register your party affiliation prior to voting in a party primary, others do not. Usually those party registrations are publicly available in states that require them. No state that I am aware of requires you to register your party affiliation if you only wish to vote in the general election after the primaries (which turns out to be the majority of the voters usually).

 

So, when you look at registered voters, you're looking at the people that are into politics enough to care about voting in the primaries, and wish to affiliate with one of the major parties. This turns out to be something of an atypical group of voters that are highly motivated and more politically active than the average person.

 

If you were to look at that paper in terms of people that "Usually Vote Democrat" vs people that "Usually Vote Republican" instead of people that are actually registered for those parties, the difference would almost certainly decline well below the 10-15% range we're talking about in this paper, as these broader categories would be less dissimilar demographically. Specifically they are less likely to be as stratified by age. But, since who individual people voted for is not publicly available (not supposed to be recorded) this comparison can not be made.

Edited by Daniel Cooper, 05 September 2023 - 08:02 PM.