Republicans (who tend to be older) encouraging their voters to get infected, avoid going to hospitals, and demand ineffective treatments seemed like a strange move to me, and research suggests that people in counties that voted for trump were many times more likely to die from the virus than people in places that voted for democrats. At times I've wondered if GOP leadership was actively trying to cut away some of the crazy in their base or if they expected the virus would be much worse for minorities in urban areas than for republicans in rural areas and miscalculated when sacrificing their own voters in order to promote spreading the virus.

Whatever their "logic" was the virus has been killing many more republicans than democrats for some time. https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/national-international/study...