Speaker 1: So to a degree that is now even surprising me and I've been following this
for a while. COVID is now the Republican virus in the United States now. Liberals are still dying
and we're going to look at the data in a moment. But that's not exactly the point here. The vaccine
take up uptake and mask guidelines have become so Partizan and so skewed politically
that the cumulative death rate, particularly since the vaccines have been widely available.
I guess we roughly may of 2021, is now a three times higher death rate in counties that voted
70 percent for Donald Trump compared the counties that voted only 30 percent to Donald Trump. This
is it's it's stunning. From a sort of disconnected analytical perspective, and it's a tragic data
Speaker 2: set when we think Speaker 1: about the unnecessary life that's
been lost. And even if they don't care about people dying, this should be a wake up call for
Republicans if they care about future elections. Listen to this from NPR. Since May of 2021,
people living in counties that voted heavily for Donald Trump during last election have been nearly
three times as likely to die from COVID than those who live in areas that went for now President
Joe Biden. We have some of this data visualized. People living in counties that went 60 percent or
higher for Trump had a 2.7 times higher death rate than those that went for Biden. Counties with an
even higher share of the vote for Trump saw even Speaker 2: higher COVID 19 mortality
Speaker 1: rates. For example, in October, the reddest tenth of the country saw death rates
six times higher than the bluest tenth of the country. It is absurd to a degree that is even
surprising me at this point in time. Now, over the last few weeks, the gap has shrunk a little bit.
But in those super red versus super Speaker 2: blue counties,
Speaker 1: it's still a five and a half times higher death rate. Absolutely incredible.
Now let's go through some of the talking points that you will hear from the right.
Mostly, the talking point on these numbers is you've got to control for
age. Republicans are on average, Speaker 2: older Republican
Speaker 1: counties are on average older, and the age difference explains the difference in
death rates and the responses. No, it is not. Even when controlling for age,
this is the trend dramatically higher death rate in Trump counties rather than Biden counties now.
On the other flip side of Speaker 2: this, going back
Speaker 1: to what we talked about with Marjorie Taylor Greene earlier. The higher the Trump vote
share, the lower the vaccination rate. Speaker 2: This is not
Speaker 1: like cancer, even though Marjorie Taylor Greene said We don't shut down for
cancer. This is not like cancer in that. With cancer, we don't know the causes of
many types of cancer cancers with many we do with many we don't. Many different types here we
know and the trend is clear. More vaccination, lower death. And we also see more Trump vote
a lower vaccination rate. These are the Trump vaccines. As they like to say, Trump came up with
them. Trump wants you to believe he synthesized the sequence. The virus himself and his voters
still don't want them. Now, obviously, we don't know the politics of the individuals who die. A
Biden voter in a red county and still die and they do. A Trump voter in a blue county can still die.
And they do. But the association here is extreme, and it even goes beyond this.
Speaker 2: It is likely on the basis Speaker 1: of the lower vaccination
rate among Republicans Speaker 2: now
Speaker 1: the lowest vaccinated demographic group in the United States
that even the deaths in the blue counties probably skew towards Republicans relative to their share
of the population. A lot of right wingers call me on my voicemail and they say, David, why are you?
They don't say David, sir. No. They just Speaker 2: say David.
Speaker 1: Or even worse names. Why aren't you talking about how black people won't get
vaccinated? And every time I check the numbers to see, has something changed?
And it hasn't. Black folks do have a lower vaccination rate than some other groups, but it
is still significantly higher than the vaccination rate among Republicans. Republicans are now the
largest unvaccinated group. There is no single demographic factor when you look at gender,
race, educational level across all of these. Being a Republican right now is the
signal that you are most likely to be unvaccinated right now. Now at some point.
The public health tragedy that has been this pandemic could become a political tragedy for
Republicans if they keep going with the current approach. I'm not giving them advice. My concern
is I care about people's lives, regardless of their politics. And as we've said before,
your decision not to get vaccinated doesn't only put you at risk, but we're beyond that.
If Republicans care about election strategy, you would think that they'd be saying it's
not good for us to disproportionately lose more of our voters than they are losing of theirs.
I don't know what it'll take to get them to change their tune