Pro-Trump counties now have far higher Covid death rates due to misinformation
npr.org
npr.org
Sorry, I was wrong about that, see timmytokyo's comment below.
"The trend was robust, even when controlling for age, which is the primary demographic risk of COVID-19 mortality."
However, there is no "even" about it. They should control for age (as they purportedly did), or the results are probably meaningless.
I think it is deceptive that they emphasize the numbers which don't account for that, and I can't find the numbers they get after controlling for age.
Like what? Please tell us what methodological errors you discovered instead of just alluding to them.
> isn't this sort of like saying smokers die younger on average because of misinformation?
Well, kind of. There was a time when smokers died younger because of misinformation. Tobacco companies told them cigarettes were safe, despite their own research showing otherwise.
The difference is that smoking is addictive and avoiding vaccines is not.
> People like to tell themselves that ignorance must be the reason people disagree with them, and if only they were educated they'd see the world as I do.
I agree that it's not (always) ignorance. These people have been presented with both sides of the debate.
The issue here is tribalism. Their tribe doesn't want to get vaccinated and sees it as a cultural betrayal for whatever reason.
Amongst other problems with this story:
- It ignores deaths or injuries caused by vaccines. NPR is still acting as if they don't happen at all, which is itself misinformation. As far as they're concerned there are no downsides to any medical intervention, only COVID deaths matter. This is wrong and it's misinformation to not try to incorporate that into their calculations (but of course they cannot, because the agencies and people that would have to collect and study that data are by now heavily conflicted and basically refusing to do so, doubling down on the circle of misinformation).
- They are using the very same data that the people they're talking about don't trust, to claim those people are misinformed. This is a circular "heads we win, tails you lose" argument.
- Given that the whole argument is that Republican = misinformation = death, it also ignores deaths from other Democrat-pushed policies, like lockdowns, and the decriminalization or outright encouragement of violent crime. Although you may say that isn't about vaccines the story itself isn't actually about vaccines, it's just trying to use that to make partisan political points about who should be considered politically legitimate.
- The claim is that Democrats are less susceptible to "misinformation" about vaccines due to "mistrust in official sources of information". Yet last year senior Democrats were telling people they wouldn't take the vaccines and openly encouraging people to refuse for those exact same reasons:
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=941365826441581
So clearly, this is not actually as politically based as NPR are claiming.
- It claims "the most widely believed false statement was: The government is exaggerating the number of COVID-19 deaths."
Yet this is not misinformation, it's a proven fact. Not for no reason did the New York Times publish a list of "1000 deaths of COVID" early on in the pandemic, in which the sixth person on the list had been shot. Not for nothing are the numbers always listed as "died with COVID" not "died of COVID". These figures have been using the most aggressive re-definitions from the start, definitions that most people would say quite simply aren't honest. The fact that someone can be murdered or die of cancer and yet be counted as a COVID death is not disputed by anyone, except, apparently, NPR.
I mean... it largely is, surely? Most smokers today were also smokers when cigarette companies were allowed to misleadingly advertise their products, and when they were still loudly claiming that they were safe.
Enthusiasm for smoking in the generation born after cigarette advertising was largely eliminated is much lower.
> It's not ignorance, it's a difference of opinion, and its destructive to pretend that there is some universal version of "right"
There is... an objective reality here, though. Covid vaccines exist, they are safe, and they are extremely effective at preventing death. Like, there's not a huge amount of room for opinion here.