The polarization of political opinions as well as the disinformation fueled by social media can ultimately be deadly.
As proof: in the counties of the American states which voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump in November 2020, the risk of dying from COVID-19 is, since last May, 2.78 times higher than in the corners of the country having expressed a vote for current President Joe Biden.
Worse, in the 10 most Republican counties, the spread of the coronavirus has killed six times more than in the 10 most democratic counties last October alone, indicates an exhaustive analysis carried out by the American public radio network NPR.
These disparities in disease and death can be explained in part by a lower acceptance of vaccination in regions strongly inspired by the populist and ex-President Donald Trump and by a greater inclination in these regions to adhere to fallacious beliefs about effects of the disease or on the risks associated with vaccine protection.
Ironically, the ex-president and his wife were vaccinated against COVID-19 last January before leaving the White House.
“An unvaccinated person is three times more likely to have a political inclination for Republicans rather than Democrats,” says Liz Hamel, who leads public opinion research at the Kaiser Family Foundation, a think tank non-partisan who is interested in health policies and the behavior of Americans in the face of vaccination. “If I had to guess if someone has been vaccinated or not and I can only know one thing about them, then I would ask them what their political affiliation is”, she adds in an interview to the public network .
NPR has scrutinized the results of the last U.S. presidential vote and the death rate from COVID-19 per 100,000 population, since 1er last May, in more than 3,000 counties in the United States. This date was chosen because it marks the moment in the pandemic era when vaccination has been accessible to everyone without exception across the country.
In counties where Donald Trump won the ballot by 60% of the vote and above, COVID-19 has killed nearly 3 times as many people as in Democratic-majority counties.
The administration of a first dose of vaccine had reached a plateau at 59% among Republicans while it was 91% among Democrats, according to the latest data collected by the Kaiser Family Foundation in November. Rural Donald Trump supporters and white Republicans are the most likely to reject vaccines out of hand, according to the organization.
Disinformation
Trump supporters are also more fragile in the face of the misinformation circulating about the pandemic and vaccines. More than 90% of them say they believe at least one of the false information circulating about the pandemic or vaccines to justify their position on the current health crisis. 46% even say they adhere to 4 or more of these false facts. These can range from the number of deaths, which they say would be exaggerated by authorities to create panic, to the theory that the vaccine renders sterile and was invented to manipulate minds and control populations. Barely 14% of Democrats are willing to adhere to 4 or more of these spurious statements, the circulation of which has been amplified by social media and radicalization, as is the siled social construction of reality which they promote for ends. commercial.
According to Johns-Hopkins University, more than 788,000 Americans have lost their lives since the start of the pandemic after contracting COVID-19. For 14 days, the pandemic has picked up in the United States with an increase in cases of contamination (+ 28%), hospitalization (+ 18%) and death (+ 13%), according to data from the New York Times (NYT). The trend is carried by states like Wyoming, Montana and West Virginia which expressed strong majorities in favor of Donald Trump in the last elections.
Elected officials from several Republican states, including Florida and Texas, are also continuing their campaign to block federal health policies aimed at making vaccination of the population mandatory and maintaining mistrust of vaccination coverage programs and the wearing of masks. .
According to the latest data compiled by the NYT, unvaccinated Americans were 5 times more likely to contract and transmit COVID-19 than those fully vaccinated. They are also 3 times more likely to die from it.