"Let Them Secede So We Can Live": Republican Red States August Death Rate More Than Double Democratic Ones
September 3, 2020
Let the Red States succeed and return majority rule to the Blue States, who now are cheated out of the presidency and the Senate majority by the Electoral College and two senators for states with few people having as much power as states such as California and New York. (worldometers.info)
By Alan Austin
The risk of dying of coronavirus is vastly higher in US states with Republican Party governors than in those with Democratic governors.
Through the month of August, just ended, the 50 states and the District of Columbia recorded 29,494 Covid-19 deaths. That is 89.9 per million people, one of the world’s worst results.
But here’s the thing. Just six states experienced more than half those deaths – Texas, Florida, Georgia, Arizona, South Carolina and Mississippi. And yes, they all have Republican governors. Of the 22 states which recorded deaths per million in August higher than fifty, 17 have Republican leadership (red states) and just five are Democratic (blue states). See chart at the top.
Red versus Blue
Of all 51 states, 24 have Democratic governors. These have a total population of 178.0 million people and recorded 9,865 deaths in August. That is a death rate of 55.4 per million population for the month. Not good.
The other 27 states with Republican governors have a total population of 150.2 million and recorded 19,629 deaths in August. That is a death rate of 130.7 per million for the month. That is disastrous.
This difference is highly statistically significant. States with Republican governors have been worse hit by a multiple of nearly 2.4.
All data is from Worldometers which updates all coronavirus data daily for all countries and all US states.
States worst impacted
Texas, population 29.0 million, had the highest number of deaths in August, at 5,483. That was 189.1 per million. Next highest in raw numbers were Florida with 4,346 and California with 3,798.
New York’s deaths per million have declined from a ghastly 1,085 in April, to 346 in May, to 32.7 in July and now 13.6 in August. Impressive.
In contrast, Mississippi’s deaths per million have increased from 81 in April, to 159 in May, to 198 in July and now 272 in August.
This adds weight to the argument that the states devastated in the early months were those with the big international airports which were not closed soon enough to infected arrivals from China and Europe. The infection and death rates in those states was then exacerbated by Trump’s failures to implement quarantining, testing and tracing. The fact that most of them had Democratic governors was coincidental.
Tracking monthly totals
Analysis of outcomes for each month is essential in assessing the effectiveness of management strategies currently in place by removing those early stage deaths.
There is clearly a strong correlation between Republican governorships and high current death rates. This does not, however, necessarily imply causation. Both the adverse virus outcomes and the Republican regimes could be the result of other factors – such as libertarian zeal, rugged individualism or stupidity.
The challenge for citizens in all states is to determine what, if anything, the Democratic governors are doing differently today from their Republican counterparts and thereby saving significant lives. It may because the Blue States listen to scientific recommendations and the Red States listen to Trump’s cultish world of magical delusion.
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