#Trump covid full#
A full 94% of Republicans think one or more false statements about COVID-19 and vaccines might be true, and 46% believe four or more statements might be true. The Kaiser Family Foundation's polling shows Republicans are far more likely to believe false statements about COVID-19 and vaccines. Misinformation appears to be a major factor in the lagging vaccination rates. Phil Valentine died in August about five weeks after he announced he had tested positive for COVID-19. "His situation took a nosedive like you can't believe." "Before I knew it, he was in there and I couldn't get to him, couldn't talk to him," Valentine recalls. "And frankly I didn't think about it anymore."īut a week later, Mark said he got a call from his brother's wife saying that the two were going to the hospital. "He said, 'I've got the ivermectin, I started it this morning, and I don't think it's going to be a big deal,' " Mark Valentine recalls. His brother said he was trying several alternative therapies commonly promoted in conservative circles. Neither brother was vaccinated, and neither one was particularly worried about Phil's positive result. Earlier this year, he contracted the virus and died. Phil had been skeptical about COVID and the COVID vaccines, sometimes mocking them on his talk show. By comparison, 91% of Democrats are vaccinated.Ĭonservative talk radio host Phil Valentine (right), pictured with his brother, Mark (second from left).
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But over time, the vaccination rates in those demographics have risen, while the rate of Republican vaccination against COVID-19 has flatlined at just 59%, according to the latest numbers from Kaiser. African Americans, younger Americans and rural Americans all had significant portions of their demographic that resisted vaccination. Earlier in the pandemic, many different groups expressed hesitancy toward getting vaccinated. Political affiliation is now the strongest indicator of whether someone is vaccinated, she says: "If I wanted to guess if somebody was vaccinated or not and I could only know one thing about them, I would probably ask what their party affiliation is." "An unvaccinated person is three times as likely to lean Republican as they are to lean Democrat," says Liz Hamel, vice president of public opinion and survey research at the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health policy think tank that tracks attitudes toward vaccination. Polling also shows that mistrust in official sources of information and exposure to misinformation, about both COVID-19 and the vaccines, run high among Republicans. Recent polling shows that partisanship is now this single strongest identifying predictor of whether someone is vaccinated. Surgeon General Is Calling COVID-19 Misinformation An 'Urgent Threat' Those numbers have dropped slightly in recent weeks, Gaba says: "It's back down to around 5.5 times higher." In October, the reddest tenth of the country saw death rates that were six times higher than the bluest tenth, according to Charles Gaba, an independent health care analyst who's been tracking partisanship trends during the pandemic and helped to review NPR's methodology. Counties with an even higher share of the vote for Trump saw higher COVID-19 mortality rates. People living in counties that went 60% or higher for Trump in November 2020 had 2.73 times the death rates of those that went for Biden. from May 2021, the point at which vaccinations widely became available. NPR looked at deaths per 100,000 people in roughly 3,000 counties across the U.S. That's according to a new analysis by NPR that examines how political polarization and misinformation are driving a significant share of the deaths in the pandemic. Since May 2021, people living in counties that voted heavily for Donald Trump during the last presidential election have been nearly three times as likely to die from COVID-19 as those who live in areas that went for now-President Biden.
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Polling, vaccination and mortality data all suggest that Republicans lag far behind in vaccination and are suffering the worst consequences as a result. People protest a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for municipal workers on Oct.