Republicans had higher COVID mortality than Democrats?
Legitimate science or FAKE NEWS?
I have yet to see any scientific journal “the study” was published and peer reviewed in as a legitimate scientific study free of political bias by the researchers with disclosed conflict of interest statements. Some news articles called it the “NPR Study” and only a couple were responsible enough to include the following disclaimer, “The analysis only looked at the geographic location of COVID-19 deaths. The exact political views of each person *[as well as vaccination status] taken by the disease remains unknowable.”
Thus, making causal assertions based on correlational data remains highly speculative at best and FAKE NEWS at worst. For example, to cobble together the misleading conclusion that Republicans (=Trump supporters) suffered higher COVID mortality because they were unvaccinated (=more prone to believe in misinformation) based solely on geographic location of COVID-19 deaths is patently absurd and qualifies as FAKE NEWS.
It reminds me of the scientific study published in 2019 which measured clinical psychopathy as a function of which state the study subjects lived in. States with the highest psychopathy were predominately blue states, while states with the lowest psychopathy were predominately red states. Interestingly, Washington DC, though not a state (yet), had twice the levels of psychopathy as the highest ranking state (Connecticut) and 90% of DC voters voted for Hillary in 2016.
While it may be tempting for those with a political bias to conclude that Democrats (=Hillary voters) are more likely to be psychopaths than Republicans, it would be unscientific and wrong to make such causal assertions based solely on the geographic location of the study subjects “whose political views remained unknowable”, which is why the author of the study didn’t make such unwarranted claims. *[words in brackets above are mine]
Pro-Trump counties now have far higher COVID death rates. Misinformation is to blame
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/12/05/1059828993/data-vaccine-misinformation-trump-counties-covid-death-rate
Psychopathy by U.S. state: A translation of regional measures of the Big Five personality traits to regional measures of psychopathy
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405844018365575